


Weeds

by rocketdeer



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, Angsty Loki, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:58:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rocketdeer/pseuds/rocketdeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki loathes to inherit his father's company, but Laufey will not hear otherwise. He's trying and failing to find a way out when he meets Thor and gets distracted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in which Loki is conflicted

**Author's Note:**

> Or: the events that transpire which render Loki insane.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even as he haughtily refrained from veiling his disdain, and even as Laufey looked upon his child as weak, they were locked together and neither even entertained a means of escaping the quandary.

His education was to start with an internship, and he was placed under the supervision of two garrulous secretaries in a small, unnamed office with tinted windows. It took his driver nearly thirty minutes longer to get there in the mornings because of traffic, and to say nothing of the fact that it was on the other side of the city—the poorer, seedier side of the city—from the resplendent skyscrapers making up the important parts of his family’s business.

He suspected this was the first test given to him by his father. As the son of the CEO and founder, he ought to have been shadowing important people rather than learning the ins-and-outs of filing paperwork. But Laufey’d had to fight for everything he’d ever achieved, so he thought it clever to make Loki do the same. It didn’t matter how high his GPA was, or the 2250 on his SAT, flying in the face of all the attention his father had never poured into his education; he was self-made, but not in the way Laufey valued. So he would learn the tittering ladies’ jobs quickly and then force the issue on his father, and if Laufey was pleased with the argument he presented, he would assent to transfer Loki up—though Loki had the impression that his new position would be only marginally closer to a station he deserved than the previous, and the cycle would repeat.

He played the game without fervor or fury, as he had no love of the business and no desire of the company; but as Laufey’s only son, his only child, it was unsaid that Loki would inherit it regardless—even as he haughtily refrained from veiling his disdain, and even as Laufey looked upon his child as weak, they were locked together and neither even entertained a means of escaping the quandary.

Well, that was a lie. Loki dreamed on the matter all the time; an effective solution had just thus far eluded him.

That was a lie, too.

 

The secretaries were older women, no-nonsense enough but given to long bouts of conversation uninterrupted by breath or food. Both were in the throes of menopause so that even in the fading heat of August, there were no less than three osculating desk fans buzzing at any given time, and the bottom partition of the tinted front window was always propped open.

Loki sat apart from their side-by-side desks on the visitor’s couch, doing his work on the coffee table, listening idly to their endless dialogue as he performed the simple tasks they asked of him in the days before school would start—or, more often, reading and texting Darcy. He had the rare gift of being able to distance himself from outside interference, to where all the noise caused by the fans and their chattering masters never distracted him from his work.

Of course, that’s when the construction started. The whole block was being torn up, to extend the width of the sidewalks and repave the dilapidated street which the weeds had been so careful about crumbling.

The first week was the worst, all jackhammers and bobcats breaking up and then hauling off the offending asphalt. The noise was immense and it took a while for Loki to acclimatize himself to it; but by far, the more obnoxious change was the affect it had on the secretaries. For the vast majority of the day, that low window which was so instrumental in their marginal comfort had to remain closed, else the sound was unbearable and prevented their work from being done at all. The old building became a little stuffy on account of this, and in turn the women’s verbal affirmations of suffering in and of themselves became insufferable; and hardly more work was done with the window shut than were it open.

And so, the moment the union workers took their lunch break at eleven-thirty and the construction subsided, the window was unlatched and the women basked in the small comfort of three osculating fans lined up on the sill.

Being mostly too poor to afford to go someplace for lunch, the majority of the construction workers brought their own lunch and ate it on site. It was to this purpose that a group of them took to sitting right outside that window, partially to take advantage of ne fan facing outward in an effort to expel the stale, hot air inside the office. Their boisterous conversation often replaced the secretaries’, when the women were particularly overcome with the heat and mostly speechless in the cooler air.

Being experienced at ignoring pointless conversation, Loki could ignore the group too, and he only ever looked up once when an especially loud roar of laughter came in response to some crude comment. The secretaries threw the group subtle looks of annoyance, and without being bidden, one of the men, large and blonde, turned and said amicably through the window he could not see into, “Sorry, excuse us—if anyone is there, we apologize!”

The ladies did not answer, and Loki returned to his paperwork.

Often times, a little while after the workers, Loki would leave to take his lunch. He always scattered their conversation when he came out the door, though there was really no need since he could hear it just as plainly from inside. But despite the shyness of the group, the large blonde man with his hair pulled back was outgoing and cheerful, and he would smile brightly in acknowledgement of Loki’s existence. He was so forthcoming with his simple rapport and so genuine with his smiles that it was no wonder the others would take his example and chime in to greet Loki. Towards the end of that week, this became so natural a response that Loki would find himself on the receiving end of ‘hello’s even in the mornings when he initially arrived, if any one of them so happened to catch his face amidst their work—and no longer needed prompting from their charismatic, de facto leader to do so.

And, it happened that Loki started to nod back—at least to the blonde man, if no one else. Even for someone like Loki, who tended towards disliking the people he did not outright hate, it was hard to fly in the face of goodwill like that. Even if the man only seemed foolish for all his trouble.

 

The street was finished and then they moved onto the sidewalks. Once the broken concrete was hauled off, a great deal of leveling the ground was required because it had apparently not been done properly the first time the sidewalk was made; so the whole ordeal would take extra time. It became difficult to access the door to the office building, at least without disturbing or mussing what the construction workers had already worked on, and in turn the workers had put a length of plywood propped up on cinderblocks from the office’s door to the newly finished street. It was quite thoughtful in Loki’s opinion, as it saved the ladies from complaining about the inconvenience, and in turn prevented the workers from becoming frustrated with them.

That Friday, his father came to call. At around eleven-forty, the group outside the window silenced unusually and moments later the door opened, shocking the secretaries because anyone who came to do business at this location knew to wait until nightfall. They relaxed when they saw it was only Laufey, dressed simply in a plain Italian suit, and bid him good afternoon.

The workers began their conversation again, abet a little quieter than before.

Laufey said he was only here to check up on Loki, see how he was fairing after two and a half weeks, but Loki was on edge regardless. The type of activity that went on in this location might incriminate Laufey if the police ever got off their asses, and he did not visit here in the daytime without good reason.

Be that as it may, Loki had been waiting for this opportunity since the first and he did not disappoint; with the secretaries as silent sentinels, he showed Laufey everything he’d been taught, ran through all the details and such that he would never need to know if he did become head of the business someday. He felt the ladies’ relief when his knowledge proved accurate, since his poor performance would’ve been telling of their incompetence as much as his own.

But this was the chance Laufey was giving him to argue for a better internship—any sooner would’ve been in bad taste, and any longer yet would make him seem daft or lazy, that he would not desire something more engaging after almost three weeks of the overly simplistic job.

Unfortunately, Loki overshot his game. When he brought the subject up to his father, Laufey sent the secretaries off into the back room with a wave of his hand.

He examined Loki critically, his face blank and his voice and manner calm as he began, “I am to understand that you believe this work is unimportant?” Loki made to reply but his father cut him off, “Because it is _this_ kind of work that keeps our corporation alive, that allows _us_ to do our jobs.”

“That is all well and good, Father—I do not dispute you on that matter—I just mean to say that my presence here is wasted. It is too simple for me—,”

Laufey took his argument not as enthusiasm, as he had planned, but as flagrant arrogance—the thought of which gave him a funny, hollow feeling of mirth at how wrong his father was about that. Laufey rejected the appeal because he still had plans for Loki’s education here, and in the future Loki would do well not to make brash assumptions based on what he guessed Laufey was thinking. The unspoken clause there was, ‘if you happen to be wrong.’

But Loki wasn’t the type to give up on something so easily, especially when the sense of it was so clear and understandable; he and his father thought very similarly on many things, despite how different their methods were, and Laufey was bound to see reason—

His father yelled at him. He did not scream, or froth at the mouth; it was just enough severity and volume to make it understood that this was a point upon which there would be no debate. Laufey repeated himself through clenched teeth, saying the words purposefully, that he still had plans for Loki’s education here—

Oh. He was to work the nightshift, then.

He felt sick, but kept it from showing on his face.

This facet Laufey had so carefully kept from him was exactly the one thing Loki wanted no part in the company, hence the fact that his father’s secrecy. It was why Loki hated the internship and the company and it was what so gently prodded him over that line of respect (fear) between them to where he yelled back.

He did not rage or rant or allow his voice to crack; it was just enough bald anger and disgust to convey how earnestly he despised the situation and that this in the end was the root of all the disobedience and ill-will Loki had ever thrown at his father; damn his mother and the divorce and the lack of attention, he would be _happy_ and complacent, if only Laufey would let this one thing go. Absolve him of his duty to the business-side of the company. Maybe he’d even be convinced to give up all his hopes and dreams and become the executive Laufey had always wanted for him.

But like in anything Loki really, truly wanted, it didn’t work. Laufey froze him fast with his eyes, strung him up in the air and held him there by his gaze so that even the breath stopped partway down his throat. Laufey’s voice was cold as he disagreed; delicately stated that there was no company without the business. And there would be no Loki without his acceptance of that fact.

His ears rang with silence in the aftermath of his father’s displeasure, as Laufey sighed quietly and turned away from his son, releasing Loki from his bind. It bothered him how quiet it was, because it was lunchtime; it was lunch time and the bottom window was open, and where there should have been conversation no one was speaking at all.

Laufey did not notice. He went into the back room, checking up on the secretaries and making sure everything was stocked for the evening shift before he left.

Loki did not go to lunch that day, and when at his father’s departure, the secretaries told him he was to stay with them through the eleven-o’-clock shift, he was grateful that he would not leave until long after the construction workers had gone home.

 

Loki hated pity, and was scared to death that he might find it replacing the friendliness that marked the blonde worker; but when he came to work the following day, the nods and smiles were all professional and casual and he was so relieved.

In fact, this day was much better than the one previous. He had woken up to a call from his father’s first secretary informing him that his presence was requested at the main building for a twelve forty-five meeting, and he would be absolved of his duties until three-o’-clock, upon which he was to return to his usual office building and stay on for the nightshift again. His school started next week, so Laufey must have been trying to get him that particular experience before such hours become impossible.

Loki was only going to the meeting to watch, but it felt like a victory, a concession from his father. He in fact enjoyed the company aspect of the family business somewhat, in the way that one enjoys a little exercise, and comparatively it was vastly superior to the nightshift.

In order to be punctual—which by his standards meant no less than fifteen minutes early—Loki left the office at noon sharp, dressed in one of his nicer suits, apart from the casual dress shirt, tie, and slacks he wore normally. But it was unseasonably hot for the end of August, so Loki had his coat thrown over his left arm to keep from sweating in his green silk Oxford.

The sidewalk was coming along nicely; prior to the lunch break that had only just ended, concrete had been poured all the way to right of the wooden plank leading from the door to the street. Now the workers were preparing to continue pouring concrete—the cement truck was in place and all—which would require the removal of the board connecting the office door and the sidewalk.

But the workers weren’t expecting Loki because they had become accustomed to foot traffic only in the mornings, when he and the ladies came to work, with Loki occasionally leaving at their lunch. Since no one would normally be leaving the office the rest of the day, there should have been no issue  to removing the board; and so, as Loki opened the door and stepped onto the plywood, the blonde worker, kneeling and ignorant of his presence, pulled out the rightmost cinderblock propping up the board and it tilted precariously as Loki’s weight came down on it.

Then the board came loose from its niche in the threshold and he tumbled sideways into the fresh concrete.

He must have looked horrified, or desperate, or manic laying there, his left arm with the suit coat waving frantically in the air to keep it from being dirtied, because the look the blonde man gave him was pained.

“Ah—I am sorry, I did not—are you alright?” He said apologetically. He looked like he didn’t know what to say.

Loki gingerly pushed himself up on his elbow, feeling the weight of cement in his hair remotely as he stared blankly at the light gray muck covering his arm and shoulder and pants and everything.

“Are you alright?” The blonde man repeated when Loki didn’t answer, his voice more hesitant.

“I . . . ,” Loki stopped and breathed deeply, pursing his lips into a line before relaxing and answering, his voice almost hoarse for no apparent reason, “Do—do you know of a tailor around here?” And then felt stupid for asking someone who obviously bought all his clothes factory-sized. “I mean, I have to be somewhere, I—I don’t have time to change . . . ,”

His house was in rich suburbia, almost thirty minutes away. He’d never make it in time.

The secretaries came rushing out to look, and the other workers had paused for once, staring with raised eyebrows at the scene as the ladies glared and jabbed fingers at the blonde, who glanced between them and Loki wide-eyed, as they demanded he pay for the ruined suit. The ladies only meant well; they knew how important the meeting had been to Loki.

But as some of the other workers came forward and began to argue that it had been an accident and whatnot, the man waved them off and stepped into the concrete to help Loki up.

“It’s alright, where do you have to go and when do you have to be there?”

Loki told him the name of the skyscraper and the time he was expected.

The man relaxed a little, and when he smiled Loki hated him because there was nothing to smile about. “Why, that’s plenty of time. Come, I shall get you new clothes to wear.”

The secretaries were placated for the time being, but only after threatening to complain to whoever was in charge. Loki numbly followed the man as he went to speak to his manager and obtained begrudging permission to clock out.

Loki was led to a red Tahoe and a scratchy, wrinkled blanket flecked with dirt was laid out on the passenger seat to keep the cement off the cracking leather.

“Sorry about the blanket—it was all I had to cover . . . ,” The man said as he climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car in one motion. Loki’s clean suit coat was spread across the backseat to avoid it being contaminated.

Loki didn’t say anything because he couldn’t bring himself to care for pleasantries at this point; he stopped when he went to buckle his seatbelt because he’d only dirty it.

“My name is Thor,” The man continued after he pulled out into traffic, and in the enclosed space it became apparent that his voice was a little louder than it needed to be. But Loki still took the hand that was offered with this introduction, and he did so as briefly as possible because the moment Thor took his hand off the wheel, the car swerved a little.

“What’s yours?” Thor said after a moment. When Loki told him, the other laughed. “That’s a strange name.”

Loki turned and glared in disbelief. “And that, coming from _Thor_?”

“It is not so uncommon where I was born,” He said, warmly enough. He was smiling again and Loki turned to look out the window instead.

His sullenness made him silent, which he maintained dutifully until they arrived at a concrete building several stories tall.

“Where are we?” Loki said cautiously.

“My apartment,” Thor replied.

“Are you sure there’s no tailor—or not even a tailor, any store selling suits would do—,” He said hurriedly, looking at the man’s wide shoulders and tall stature and knowing anything commercial would fit better than whatever cheap, oversized clothes Thor might have available.

“There is no need, please trust me—I’d hate to see you spend money needlessly . . . ,”

Loki considered being belligerent, because if the man had a brain in his head he could see that money was not the issue here, but in the end he was too desperate to care. Who heard of a suit shop in downtown anyway?

Up a flight of stairs, and then taking off his shoes and pulling up the hem of his sopping pants before stepping into a small apartment. The kitchenette and living room were smashed together and cramped with furniture, and the yellow tile of the kitchen was where Thor laid down some towels and asked Loki to slough off all the excess cement he could before handing him a towel and showing him the bathroom. It was a little larger than Loki had supposed it might be, and he took as quick a shower as one could when trying to get wet concrete out of one’s hair, bumping his elbows into the wall every few seconds. Then leaving the remnants of his soiled suit in the tub of the shower, he wrapped himself in the towel given to him earlier and cracked the bathroom door, morosely looking for Thor and the clothes he had promised.

Thor was waiting for him and handed him a stack of clothes and his clean suit coat. “If I am not mistaken, the colors should match well enough,” he said before closing the door behind him.

After setting the bundle on the counter top, Loki held up a silk dress shirt pinstriped white-and-blue, and when he pulled it on over his unblemished undershirt, it was not unbearably loose. Then came a silver pair of pants, only a marginally lighter than his gray suit coat. Being tall and long-legged for his age, they did not fit as badly as he’d feared—they drug a little on the ground, but this was remedied when he pulled the waistband up and belted it tight.

Loki stared at himself in the mirror, his haste quelled in a moment of shock brought on by sudden relief. He looked—well, nowhere near as good as he had this morning. The light blue didn’t suit him as well as green did, what with his eyes and all, and the pants looked funny so high on his torso; but now that he donned his coat, he realized it concealed how loose the shirt was, and if he buttoned it, the high waistband wouldn’t show, either. And anyway, he was only to sit at the back of the room and take notes—no one save his father would even give him their full attention.

When he left the bathroom, Thor was standing at the kitchen sink, cleaning the muck from his shoes. He smiled when he saw Loki.

“Hah! I knew those would fit you—I still have some things from when I was younger . . . ,” He pulled a blue tie from his pocket and continued, “This was the only one I could find that matched the shirt—,”

“How do you have all these clothes?” Loki said in rush, then berating himself mentally for not saying ‘why’ instead of ‘how.’

Thor glanced down at the shoes, his smile now part grimace, and then he looked back to Loki with a shrug. “I once had a job where I needed them.”

Loki refrained from asking what had happened and took the tie instead, quickly tying the knot to give himself something to do in the emergence of the stiff silence.

Then they were running down the stairwell, Loki looking at his watch as he took two steps at a time, saying, “Oh hell—it’s 12:27—,”

“That’s plenty of time,” Thor exclaimed, exasperation coloring his voice as he followed Loki at a jog, “What, you wanted to be twenty minutes early?”

“Well—fifteen.”

Thor let out a bark of laughter, and when Loki turned at the sharp noise, the man was grinning so widely his eyes crinkled at the corners.

They had nearly arrived before Loki realized he hadn’t even thanked Thor for taking off work and lending him clothes—the man shrugged it off when he did.

“It was the least I could do for pushing you into fresh concrete,” He said.

“To be perfectly honest, you didn’t push me, you dumped me.”

Thor gave him another wide smile and Loki had to look away again.

They arrived with eight minutes to spare, and maybe Loki would make it to the conference room on time if he ran—but as he opened the door and jumped out, Thor said, “Hey—,”

On the verge of frustration, but feeling obligated to indulge the man, Loki turned back to Thor as he leaned forward across the seat. For a moment, Thor seemed unsure of how to begin, glancing away from Loki in something resembling embarrassment; but when he found his words, he looked Loki in the eye as he said them: “When I was your age, my father would be hard on me sometimes, believing he knew what was right for me—but despite that, I never doubted that he loved me. Don’t be too hard on yourself, for I’m certain that your father loves you, too.”

His eyes were kind, but that only made it worse. Glaring, Loki slammed the car door shut and stalked away, his throat choked with anger and his ears burning with embarrassment.

 

“That suit’s not yours, is it?” His father said casually after the meeting, once the other men had gone.

“No, I borrowed it.”

Laufey raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

Loki unbuttoned his coat and showed him where the pants were belted too high on his waist. Laufey chuckled.

“Mary Ann and Susan called. They told me what happened, I had a suit for you here,” Loki blanched at this, realizing that his fear of disappointment had overshadowed his logic—of course his father would have been able to acquire a new suit. “Where did you get this one?”

“Ah . . . ,” Loki considered his nail beds for a moment, of the belief that if Laufey knew he’d borrowed it from a random construction worker it would not turn out well. “A friend lent it to me.”

Laufey gave him a long look then, because they both knew he didn’t have friends. But he let it go without comment, because where else would he have realistically gotten a nice suit—abet one that didn’t quite fit?

“Mmm. Resourceful of you. In any case, I’ll be working late tonight, so don’t bother calling for the car after your shift, I’ll come and pick you up.”

“Yes, Father.”


	2. in which Loki is distracted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It took Loki two and a half days and nearly being caught not paying attention in Chemistry to decide he had no choice but to find Thor and give him back his godforsaken clothes.

That night his father did not come to pick him up; rather, he had some business to attend to there that Loki was meant to witness, and they stayed long after the eleven-o-clock shift ended, not arriving home until four.

It was horrifying then in the morning when he woke up at a little past ten. He had only intended on a couple hours of sleep before showering and getting ready for his last full day of the internship, but his alarm—and his backup alarm—had not gone off. As he ran into his bathroom and started the water, the head house keeper stormed in and shoved him half-naked back into bed.

“I did not nag and hound your father this morning to let you off today just so you can run about and collapse of exhaustion anyhow!” She shouted at him. They gave each other matching, vicious glares and then she left, murmuring angrily under her breath.

The woman, “Miss Gretchen,” had little love of him or his father—rather, she had been loyal to his mother—but when his parents divorced, his mother had asked the woman to stay at the house, where Loki lived exclusively, and look after him until he moved out. Laufey had accordingly left the majority of his care to her.

So in the end, Loki never went to the office on Sunday. It shouldn’t have mattered, however, because he was still supposed to work Mondays and Fridays at the internship during the school year, from after classes let out until seven. So the next day he brought with him Thor’s dry-cleaned shirt and pants and tie. Loki’s embarrassment had since ebbed, and he wanted to return the borrowed clothes and thank him again—maybe apologize if he could swallow his pride long enough.

But the sidewalk was finished. If anything could be said for construction workers, it was that they didn’t dick around. All along the block, the concrete was smooth and new and perfect, and with the task finished, all the equipment and orange tape had been cleaned up.

“Did you get that man’s phone number?” Susan said when he walked through the door.

“No,” Loki said, adding when she gave him an exasperated look, “It’s not a big deal; the suit was old, anyway.”

 

It took Loki two and a half days and being caught not paying attention in Chemistry to decide he had no choice but to find Thor and give him back his godforsaken clothes.

Of course he had been to the man’s apartment once before, and he could probably find it again if need be, but showing up there seemed awkward and intrusive. It had to be a last resort.

Rather, he knew the name of the construction company from looking at the equipment for two and half weeks, and after seven odd minutes on the phone with a secretary, he obtained the location of the work site where the Thor was assigned; it was simple, as they had no one else hired under that name.

He decided it would be best to call at 11:30, during lunch break. In order to make it, Loki went to the first few periods of school and then ditched before fourth because it was only European History. His school was in the metropolitan area besides, so the excursion would not waste too much time. The task of finding a taxi did not even take him long.

The building was old and small, not unlike his office; it was being renovated for the new dentistry that had just purchased it. Loki arrived there on time (fifteen minutes early), and after dropping Thor’s name to the worker who tried to prevent him from entering, and then explaining the situation to the manager who was brought to see him, they told him which floor the man was working on and let him go up.

“Don’t bother ‘im ‘til he takes his break,” he was reminded as the elevator doors closed.

Loki had several minutes to kill until lunch, which he normally would’ve used to wander looking for the man. But he was fortunate in that the floor was small to begin with, and Thor was by no means difficult to spot. He was taking down a wall with a sledgehammer.

The work was exhaustive, so the flannel shirt he customarily wore was off and the back of his t-shirt was damp with sweat. Loki watched as he hefted the hammer, one hand at the bottom of the handle and the other underneath the head, and swung it sideways into the wall, sending up a little cloud of dust and molding. Loki covered his mouth and nose with his hand, copying the white mask that Thor wore.

Thor hacked away at the brick until the foreman called out 11:30, and that’s when Loki walked over to him, drifting hesitantly into his line of sight in lieu of saying anything.

Leaning the sledgehammer against the wall, Thor’s eyebrows hitched up in surprise as he noticed Loki. Then he pulled down the dust mask, revealing his smile.

“How did your appointment go?”

“Ah, it, was fine. I was just attending a meeting, it wasn’t anything serious.”

“That’s not the impression I got,” Thor replied, his voice pleasant.

“Well—it was the first time my father’d let me go.”

And with that, the conversation stiffened, both reminded of the way had Loki stormed off the last time they’d spoken. He changed the subject by holding up Thor’s old clothes in the dry cleaning bag over his arm.

“There was no need for you to return them, I assure you,” Thor said, holding up a hand when Loki tried to push the bag on him anyway. “I have no need for them any longer, and they do not fit, besides. You would get more use out of them than I ever will.”

“That’s all well and good, but they don’t fit me, either—,”

“True, but you have a better chance of growing into them than I do. You are still in school, yes?”

Loki shrugged. The clothes he wore that resembled a school uniform—incomplete because of the hot black blazer he’d folded in his locker before ditching—might have been telling. Not to mention how young he must look to someone like Thor.

“Please. You would do me a favor in taking them off my hands,” and Loki begrudgingly did not pursue the matter.

Instead, he said something insensitive and stupid: “You are astonishingly well-spoken for a construction worker.”

Thor gave another grimacing smile, and chuckled a little at the way the color drained out of Loki’s face. He pinned Loki with a look and said, skeptically, laughter still coloring his voice, “Are you making fun of me?”

“That was actually not my intention, even if it was the result,” Loki replied stiffly, “I’m sorry, I didn’t—mean—anything by it. I’m—,”

“Awkward,” Thor said over his apology, which offended Loki a little because he didn’t just hand them out. “And maybe a little stupid.”

Loki had enough pride to look appalled before Thor’s stifled laughter indicated he was teasing. And Loki had nothing to say to it, which was astonishing, because normally he was filled to bursting with sarcasm and caustic remarks for even less than jokes at his expense, even less than breathing; but none of them worked for Thor’s crinkling blue eyes so he just stood there, blank and silent, unaccustomed to such profound feelings of dumbfounded speechlessness.

It fell to Thor to continue the conversation. “Do you not have classes today?”

“I do,” He said before he could think better of it.

“Then you’d best get along, eh?” Thor palmed his forehead and pushed back pieces of hair escaped from his short ponytail. “I need to be off to lunch, and I don’t want to make you late, besides.”

“Ah—of course—,” And then Loki glanced about him like there was something he might have sat down and needed to take with him, discovered the dry cleaning bag over his arm, and looked back at Thor to nod goodbye—like he had done many times before, only in reverse.

Loki turned quickly on the spot and walked away without further action because he had trouble meeting Thor’s eyes for too long. Thor had smiled back.

 

But that day did not even finish without Loki once again drifting off in sixth period Chemistry and he was forced to reassess the situation. What had he expected to get out of the visit? What had he thought would happen, really?

Why was he not satisfied?

 _And it was frustrating_ because he had never not _known_ things about himself before. He had to know.

So when his driver picked him up at the close of school, Loki gave him the address of the construction site and drove back there, rather than to his house, ignoring his bodyguard’s complaints and probing questions.

This time Loki left the dry cleaning in the car, and the workers let him through without question.

Thor was busy with the same wall, which by this point was all but gone; he had switched to a regular hammer and was cleaning up the jagged edges of the brick sticking out of the ceiling.

Loki had realized there was no ideal point in time to speak to Thor again, that his work wouldn’t finish until five-o-clock, but he realized that in the face of the alternative, he hardly cared. He was even content to stand near the elevator, ignoring the other workers who were beginning to glance at him curiously, and watch Thor doctor up the uneven brick.

Eventually, some of the onlookers ruined it by calling Thor’s name and pointing him in Loki’s direction.

For half a moment, Loki was horrified at being caught there—though he didn’t know why he was there to begin with, so there was nothing to be ashamed of—but when Thor turned and saw him, it all drained out and left in its place a cool and comforting emptiness.

At first, Thor was mildly surprised, his eyebrows raised, not unlike he had been earlier that afternoon. Then curious, skeptical—incredulity was the word, because he didn’t know why Loki was there, either. Their transaction had been completed and there was no reason for it.

There was no reason, but in spite of the irrationality, Thor shook his head a little and his smile shouldered through the other emotions on his face, showing in his eyes. He jerked his head at a couple of dusty plastic chairs across the room and told Loki to sit until he finished.

Loki was so relieved that he was not being kicked out that he had to restrain himself from running.

Waiting did not bother him. He was infinitely patient when he was getting what he wanted, and it was his luck that he had brought his school bag with him, such that he was accustomed to wearing it. So Loki finished up the homework problems out of his calculus textbook until the foreman called out five-o-clock, and he looked up to see Thor settling down heavily in the chair beside him. The remnants of skepticism were threaded through his friendly smile, and they just stared at each other for a while for a lack of knowing what to say.

Thor glanced at the textbook before looking around the emptying room, a hand touching the back of his head and falling to rest on his ponytail. “What, ah, classes are you taking? Other than calc?”

“Chemistry, Physics, European History, American Literature, and French.”

Thor turned to him then, impressed. “ . . . That’s a huge work load! I never took more than five classes at a time.”

If anything, _that_ sounded unusual, taking less than six classes—he’d heard of some schools that stayed even later and did seven periods in a day, but none that did less.

“No wonder your backpack’s so large, do you have all of them on same day or something?” Loki narrowed his eyes at that question, but Thor smiled and continued, “I’m just joking, you must spread them out somehow—what textbook do you have for Physics?”

Loki had the book in his possession and pulled it out to show him, and Thor said, “Oh too bad, that’s the one I had as well—it was awful, no damn help at all.”

“You took Physics?”

This question was deceptively important because Physics was his favorite subject. He’d read all sorts of essays and watched all sorts of programs, and he’d been waiting to take that class since the seventh grade. It was his passion, and it was what he wanted to do with himself once he found a way to wriggle out of going to Harvard Business.

Thor shrugged. “One class, sure. I needed a lab science credit and I heard they let you make rockets and blow things up . . . ,” Having said that, he smiled self-consciously. “I was, not very studious.”

That was strange as well. High schools didn’t require specific lab credits. It was this thought and the curiousness of the conversation in general that made it occur to Loki—Thor wasn’t talking about high school. He thought Loki was in college.

“ . . . Did you drop it?”

“No, not that class—you know, I enjoyed it, a little. More than chemistry anyway—just, it’s like I said, I didn’t study and I barely got a C,” He rubbed at the beard on his jaw, “It’s almost ironic, that I wound up dating a physicist.”

For one immensely confusing and shocking and stupid moment, Loki thought he was talking about him; before he realized he was not yet a physicist, and Thor was very much not dating him. If Thor noticed how his ears turned red, he thought nothing of it, or rather thought better not to mention it.

Loki came back to himself as words were falling out of his mouth.

“Would you mind tutoring me?”

Thor grimaced, then smiled in good humor. “I think that I would do more to hinder you than anything, Loki.”

But it was the sound of his name that kept him from letting it go, spurring him on. “It’s only algebra-based, because I haven’t finished calculus yet. Even if it’s no more than a few times a week it would help—keeping ahead of the curve and all,” He added quickly as an afterthought, “You would be compensated, of course—I wouldn’t just waste your time frivolously.”

Thor looked thoughtful, but then shook his head. “I wouldn’t be able to help for long, I’m afraid. I did not do particularly well to begin with, and on top of that I’ve probably forgotten it all—,”

“If only for a little while, it would help me so much.”

The incredulity was back in full force, and Thor gave him another searching look. He didn’t believe Loki and he wasn’t making an effort to mask it—which was fair, seeing as Loki didn’t actually believe Thor could teach him beyond what he had already learned from his freshman Trigonometry class and the Science Channel.

But something in Loki’s face must have been earnest enough to convince Thor of the necessity of a tutor, even if he didn’t actually need tutoring; and in the end, Thor acquiesced.

“. . . Would meeting at the library be convenient for you?”

 “That would be excellent, I love the library.”


	3. in which Loki is warned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Yeah but you should’ve checked, you always check,” And then she continued, talking over Loki’s half-hearted excuse, “He has a girlfriend.”

Loki’s affection for the library actually had more to do with who worked there than because he liked reading (he preferred to buy his books when he thought something was worth reading). He arrived at the library thirty minutes early so he could talk to Darcy.

Darcy was a bizarre creature and a conundrum of a human being. She was neither especially intelligent nor possessing of any particular love of learning, but Loki had become besotted with the then-senior when they met in an art class in ninth grade, if only on account of the way she had pressed her attention upon him with a sincerity the likes of which he had never encountered. She was just clever enough to keep up with Loki’s biting criticism with her own smart-assed remarks, and of the particular humor that made her think his insults were hilarious.

Darcy was his only friend and he guarded her jealously—from his father and others alike. He was not of the particular temperament to let anyone know too much about himself, but if he had he would’ve told Darcy.

The days once passed in the pursuit of mundane activities—of loitering at supermarkets and cooking abominations at Darcy’s and then spending the night—were mostly lost to them now. College made Darcy’s schedule nearly as tight as Loki’s, and once she moved into the dorm in her second year of college, they had nowhere else for sleepovers. Now their interactions mostly consisted of text messages—of which there were admittedly plenty, as Darcy was all but married to her cell phone. But it wasn’t comparable to face-to-face interaction.

On the slow nights like Mondays, when Loki was able to slip beneath his father’s notice and Darcy had mostly finished shelving books, he would come to the library and they would loiter there for old time’s sake.

Darcy was found so slumped in a rolling chair behind the front desk, she was completely hidden by the computer monitor placed before her. When he walked around the counter, sure enough, her flip phone was held up in front of her face, the screen glossing the lenses of her glasses white-blue with artificial light.

“How ya doing, squirt?” She said as he sat in another rolling chair beside her, not once glancing up at him. “You’ve grown shorter since last time.”

He had been quite small in the ninth grade, and despite how much taller than her Loki was now, she’d never let him forget it.

“Oh, yes—it’s all the coffee, you understand.” 

“I feel ya—maaan, do I feel ya. Just got off work?” Apparent by the Oxford shirt and slacks he was wearing—which was the case the majority of the time anyway, but Darcy had slowly begun introducing him to jeans, which he tended towards when they loitered because it was less conspicuous than nice clothes; he hadn’t the time to go home and change.

“Yes, there wasn’t anything left to do until the late shift started, so I talked them into letting me off.”

“Cool, ‘cause I got trapped on the cheeseburger website the other day and I have _sooo_ many cats to show you—,”

“Fine, but I have to leave at seven.”

Darcy looked up then to give him a disbelieving look. “Dude, you just got here!”

“I know,” He replied evenly, but she cut him off before he could explain.

“Why’d you even _come_?”

He said, “I have a study date,” and with those words her entire demeanor changed instantaneously. As Darcy began to wiggle her eyebrows, Loki told her off, scowling, “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Freudian slip,” She said knowingly.

“Psychology is no longer your major and you are thereby not allowed to use the terminology.”

“Aw, you’re just being pissy. I mean, come on, realistically speaking—what do you even need tutoring _in_?”

“We’re studying physics.”

Darcy kicked his chair a few times and grinned. “You don’t need help in _physics_!”

“Yes I do,” Loki said defensively, and then at Darcy’s eyebrows he amended, “No I don’t, but it’s to keep me from falling behind. I have a lot of difficult classes this year.”

“You have lot of difficult classes _every_ year,” She countered, but thankfully let it drop, still snickering at him as she returned to her texting. “Log me in,” She jerked her head at the computer, “I wasn’t kidding about the cats.”

She really wasn’t.  He and Darcy had a secret pact that they would shamelessly enjoy cat pictures together if he was not required to laugh aloud and she never ever told anyone; so that occupied their time until a new patron who wandered in caught Darcy’s attention, and she exclaimed, “Thor!”

It nearly gave Loki a heart attack. He whipped his head around to the front entrance as he minimized the page—as if Thor would’ve been able to see through the back of the computer monitor and into the Internet itself. 

Thor strode over to them obliviously, all smiles. “Noble Darcy! How dost thou fare on this fine evening?”

Because of the way Thor normally talked, it took Darcy’s response for Loki to realize they were joking.

“My liege, I am most excellent, I thank thee for thy concern. Pray, allow me to present my charge: Fair Loki, Son of—,”

“That’s fine, Darcy, thank you,” Loki said curtly. Between the two of them, they were breaking the appropriate level of noise several times over.

“How do you two know each other?” Thor said as if it were a pleasant surprise. Loki wanted to ask him the same thing, unsure of how he felt about this development. He was not good at sharing.

“We went to the same high school,” Darcy said, and then Loki saw the horrible turn the conversation could take and stood up hurriedly, gathering his things as the other two talked. This was awful, _how_ could they possibly know each other?

“Really, now?”

“Yeah, he was a lot smaller back then—,”

“Alright, since you’re here now . . . ,” Loki interrupted, and made to walk around the desk to join Thor.

Darcy’s easy manner immediately changed, and she said, “Whoa whoa whoa,” pulling on his backpack strap. “You know _him_?”

Loki turned stiffly to say, “Yes, he is my tutor,” and then Darcy ruined it by bursting out laughing.

“Shut up you’re in a library—,” Loki hissed as Darcy exclaimed, “ _Physics_?”

He saw the uncomfortable half-grimace on Thor’s face, highlighting his own uncertainty as to his competency for the subject, and Loki said quickly, “I have the same textbook as he did when he took it in college, and being that it’s not a very good textbook he assented to helping me with my homework.”

 “ _You_ took physics?” Darcy said, but Loki insisted over her chuckle, “We really must start, we only have two hours . . . ,” before leading Thor to a table on the other side of the room.

“It will be easier if you sit with your back to her,” He mumbled under his breath.

“Ha, I am accustomed to Darcy, she won’t distract me,” Thor said, any embarrassment or ill-humor gone in the broad line of his smile.

Loki put his phone in his bag in defiance of Darcy.

Studying, while not entirely useless, went about as well as Loki had anticipated. In the textbook, there were no blocks of math problems to solve one after the other with the use of one method or equation. Rather, all physics problems were word problems. Right now they were learning about vectors, and his teacher had given him four equations that all essentially expressed the same idea four different ways; in order to solve the problems, he had to use at least two or more of the equations in tandem to find the missing variables and define the missing lengths of the vectors.

Physics was not straightforward in the manner of most math classes. One had to be creative and inventive in order to determine which equations would work in which situations and how they all joined up at the back; it was like tricking the universe into giving up the information one needed. To that end, it was marginally useful to have Thor reading over the problems with him, because when Loki thought he didn’t know what direction to take a problem in or arrived at a dead end, Thor could scratch his beard and stumble with him through it until they figured out something that worked.

The man was only useful a handful of times, but his company was comfortable and made the work go faster. In fact, Loki finished the homework in a little over forty minutes—most of the time spent in quiet speculation of a problem while Thor stared out the window or fingered the edge of the text book—and then the two of them sat back and looked at each other, at a loss of what to do next.

“I, suppose you can leave now? Since I’m finished and all—the unit test won’t be for a while yet, this was really all I had to do.”

Thor shrugged, then nodded. “I’m just curious as to why you felt the need to schedule so much time. Does it normally take you all that time to do your physics homework?”

“No—,” He had been thinking of the time he normally put in to study for a test, but for the majority of it, Thor probably would be unnecessary. “It just seemed like a good number, for studying, I suppose.”

“Ah, well. Not that I’m complaining, eh?” He said, standing up and stretching, his barrel-chest expanding with a deep breath. “Just want to make sure I’m not shafting you if you needed some more time to practice . . . ,”

“Not at all, I feel I have a good understanding of it,” Then an infinitesimal moment later Loki thought to add, “now,” in order to keep up appearances.

“Good, since you were the one doing all the work,” Thor said, and then smirked, and Loki felt a little ridiculous pretending that he needed the help so badly when neither of them were under that impression in the least.

Loki began gathering up his books and calculator, and out the corner of his eye he saw Thor check a watch on his wrist.

“You know—,” Thor cut himself off, and Loki looked up to see him rubbing the side of his neck. He tried again, “Have you eaten yet?”

 

“I like to read,” Thor said almost defensively, which made Loki raise his eyebrows. “It’s only that I don’t have the patience most of the time.”

“That’s a poor excuse, how could you ever sit still to read at all then?”

“No, that is not what I meant,” Thor said earnestly, one of his hands releasing his hamburger to gesticulate as he explained, “I mean to say, I can’t pay attention unless it is very exciting—it’s like pulling teeth if not, even if afterwards I can concede it was a good book.”

“So you like pulp fiction, then? Or Tom Clancy?”

“Ehh . . . ,” Thor made a sort-of motion with his hand. “Yes, but not just that, I like— _epic_ stories, you know?”

“Well define ‘epic.’”

Thor had taken another bite of his food and chewed thoughtfully for a moment before saying, his mouth still partially full, “Beowulf.”

“ _Really_?” Loki said skeptically. _Beowulf_ had never really done it for him.

“Yes. The language was a little difficult, sure, but . . . ,” He trailed off and swallowed his bite before continuing, the hand coming back again to gesture, “Those were the only kind of stories I ever really enjoyed in English classes, the great, fantastic poems and such like— _the Odyssey_ , or _the Faerie Queen_.”

And knowing what little he did of Thor, Loki could understand. It fit him so well it made him smile a little.

“That’s why I like movies more than books,” Thor said, bringing the conversation back around to the original question. “Often they’re very nearly as exciting as a good book, but then even when they’re not at least things are _moving_ and there’s stuff to _look_ at,” He paused in the silence followed by the conclusion to this thought, and then pointed at the French fries that had come with Loki’s meal.

Loki nodded and Thor set down his hamburger to assuage some of Loki’s heavy burden of untouched fried potatoes.

“So what, you watch _Beowulf_ in your free time?” Loki said dryly, passing the bottle of ketchup.

“Oh god no, have you ever seen the movie versions?” They shared a smirk.

“I’m afraid to say I have not.”

“Well, don’t be, I can assure you it is not worth your time . . . ,”

Thor returned to his burger and Loki was pleased with himself for how long he had managed to keep Thor talking that time. When food was involved, he became extraordinarily quiet.

“Are you really not going to eat _any_ of that?” Thor said exasperatedly, once he had finished his own plate and was mopping up the residual grease with his pickle wedge.

Loki gave him a pointed look and pushed the plastic red basket towards him. Thor sighed and lit into the fries without another word, eating around the toppings Loki had pulled of his burger and cast off to the side.

“Now I know why you’re so skinny,” He muttered, sucking ketchup off his fingers.

It was meant facetiously, but something in Loki flinched reflexively. He had always been small in stature, and even now, in spite of his respectable height, he retained a shadow of his former self-consciousness on account of how exceedingly thin he was. It was not a trait a man could take pride in.

With Thor, the very picture of masculinity, seated next to him for comparison, the thought occurred to Loki then that maybe he was so thin because he ate too little. Loki had never thought of his general lack of appetite as harmful; but perhaps it attributed more to his appearance than he’d considered. Loki glanced down at his hands, tracing with his eyes the veins clearly visible underneath his pale skin, and wondered if it might be better to be fat than so painfully thin and womanish.

When he looked back up, Thor was smiling—widely, his eyes crinkling at the corners at what he’d believed was an innocuous joke. Staring back at his sincerity, Loki got the impression that Thor didn’t care that he was skinny, nor if Loki had been otherwise.

The thought eased the tenseness from his shoulders and a small smile came unbidden to the forefront of his countenance. The waiter, a baggy-eyed college student, materialized out of the ether and placed the bill on the table between them before leaving the booth as silently and unnoticed as he’d arrived.

Loki’s hand closed on the little plastic tray before Thor could drop his fries to do so.

“I still haven’t paid you for the study session,” He said by way of explanation when Thor tried to argue.

Thor made a face. “I’m not sure it was worth paying money for.”

“Then at least just let me cover your bill, it will be much cheaper than what I would’ve insisted on paying you otherwise.”

 

Not long after Thor had dropped him off—not at his house, but rather in front of a smaller one a ten minute walk around the corner—Miss Gretchen came into his room to ask if he’d had dinner. Loki was so snottily happy as he told her he had, that rather than becoming affronted, she narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously and left him alone the rest of the night.

He only retrieved his phone after carefully folding his clothes away and showering. He laid on his bed atop the covers with the intent of seeing to Darcy before starting on the rest of his homework he hadn’t finished at the internship or the library.

Loki had at least ten different texts from her, none of any real importance, their purpose having been to annoy him.

> _still dont believe u, physics ha_

> _r u joking, is this really a drug deal or sumthing?_

> _a secret love affair?_

> _i just made up a joke, how many guys does it take 3 do lokis math hmwk?_

> _**sry meant 2_

> _aw ur not even gonna guess?_

> _u have 2 call me after tho_

And then a while later, while he was having burgers with Thor,

> _duuuude r u home ye?_

> _ugh turn ur phone on_

> _ur not pissed rite?_

> _srsly call me we need 2 talk_

Not one to disappoint, Darcy picked up immediately.

“Where were _you_?” Music loud enough to be heard in the background indicated she was back at her dorm.

“We went out to eat afterwards,” Loki replied, something akin to smugness coloring his words.

“Tch—oh god—see, _that’s_ what I needed to talk to you about, you should’ve _called_ . . . ,”

“I didn’t realize you were texting me, my phone was in my backpack,” He said innocently.

“Yeah but you should’ve checked, you _always_ check,” And then she continued, talking over Loki’s half-hearted excuse, “He has a girlfriend.”

At that moment, Loki wished she could see his face because he was rolling his eyes in a most unimpressed fashion. “What do _I_ care?”

“She’s my best friend, Loki,” and for once Darcy sounded serious. “That’s how we know each other, he’s dating Jane.”

That was a bitter irony. The stab of surprise was overcome by a rolling wave of jealousy, the kind that usually arose at something like this, unaware of it as Darcy was. He had to take a moment to let it pour over him, let it dissipate out in the form of the momentary clench of his hand into a fist; expel it where she wouldn’t see so that it would not carry into his voice.

“You misunderstand me, Darcy; I only meant that I don’t like him that way,” This age-old argument was a comfortable distraction from his resentment, and his voice fell into familiar patterns of casual disinterest and exasperation. “I don’t like _anyone_ that way. We’ve been over this a million times—just because I don’t like women doesn’t mean I like men.”

“I know I know, you hate everyone forever, yadda yadda—,” Speaking over his attempt to defend himself, that he didn’t especially hate everyone, he was just repulsed by the idea of prolonged physical contact with them, Darcy insisted, “—but _I_ saw how nervous you got when he showed up and we were looking at cats—,”

“That’s because you’ve never seen what I do when _anyone_ walks in on us looking at cats,” Loki inserted dryly.

“—and you went ahead and spent time with him afterwards—,”

“So what if he’s good company, that doesn’t mean anything.”

“—and need I remind you this was all _before_ you knew he had a girlfriend,” Darcy finished, expectantly, like he was supposed to collapse on the floor and confess to his dire attraction.

“The fatal flaw in your argument is that I already knew that. He mentioned her beforehand—I just didn’t know who.”

“Dude,” was all Darcy said. It confused him because she wasn’t complaining at him, like she normally did when Loki proved her wrong.

“What?”

“ _Dude_.”

“Darcy, quit it.”

“You don’t need help in school! You don’t even _want_ help in school when you _need_ help in school! So tell me why you’re making up excuses to hang out with him, if it’s not ‘cause you like him?”

She was coming too close to the surface of that painful, unquantifiable thing that made him resent, a length of cord someone had unknowingly tangled in their pocket where his soul should have been. There was a time when she very nearly loosened it—she very nearly sorted it into something manageable until they had fallen away from each other, and then their prolonged distance made back up the difference. Now, as Darcy kept pricking him in his pressure points, pulling and yanking on the convoluted knot that held him up inside, rage and envy grown and cultivated in the heart of the tangle came dripping out.

“ _I just want another friend_ , is that too much to ask when you’re gallivanting around at college and going to the freaking observatory or the lab every single night, texting me about how much fun you’re having doing physics with Jane—I just want him to be my friend. Leave me alone about it already.”

Loki expected—Loki _wanted_ her to say something snarky in return, because of unlike him it was to become so unhinged; and because it was unfair to accuse her about Jane when the whole wretched situation wasn’t really anyone’s fault.

But his tangent must have affected her particularly, because instead Darcy backed down. “Sorry, I—just, it’s weird, you trying to hang out with somebody. No what I mean is, I’m just not used to it, so I thought it meant something—sorry, man.”

“Don’t be,” Loki said quietly after a moment. He really wasn’t angry, it wasn’t her fault.

“But you want my advice?”

Loki didn’t answer, pointedly.

“Drop the studying crap and just ask him to hang out. Thor’s cool, he’ll say yes, you don’t have to trick him into it by pretending to be stupid and need his help—,”

“ _Oh_ come _on_ Darcy—,”

“—because if you’ve seriously sunk that low then there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

“That is not what I’m doing at _all_.”

“Yeah you sound like a teenage girl with low-self-esteem already,” Loki refused to answer that, and so Darcy continued as if their conversation hadn’t waned, her casually playful tone of voice having returned as if nothing had happened, “But if you’re planning on making time in your busy schedule for _Thor_ , maybe you could keep hanging out at the library?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized, it probably would help to mention, this story takes place in 2005. 
> 
> Is it sad I based the timeline around when the Lord of the Rings movies came out?


	4. in which Loki is infatuated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a noble sentiment what he said to Darcy, but in the end it proved to be just that.

Loki had Thor’s cell phone number; it had been gifted to him by the aforementioned in order to set up acceptable studying times. It was the only one in his address book with no last name, no email address, no home phone, no footnote detailing his relationship to Loki. All his other contacts were blatantly professional and overflowing with precise information—even Darcy’s entry had every blank perfectly filled: whose footnote simply read “Friends” in a subtle mockery of his social life (mostly because “Friend” made it sound more depressing than it actually was).

But Thor was just, “Thor. (123)456-7890.” Loki had never gotten the chance to ask about the particulars. But even so, he thought it was fitting; curt and simple, no-nonsense. Honest.

 

The next time at the library was a Wednesday, earlier in the afternoon on account of his not having the internship, and Loki waited for Thor outside on the steps. He hadn’t even gone in.

Loki didn’t share well and Darcy was going to have to live with that.

“I finished my homework,” Loki said by way of greeting, when Thor got out of the Tahoe and walked over to him curiously.

Thor raised his eyebrows and scratched the back of his neck. “Oh . . . should I leave, then? You could have called me, you know . . . ,”

That was true, Loki probably should have called and given his proposition before now—but he had feared being brushed off, despite what Darcy might’ve told him. Besides, he had a better plan than all that.

“Sorry. You see, I came to the library early for lack of anything better to do, to get started on my homework—,” Oh that was a stupid thing to say, he’d been going for nonchalant but it just ended up sounding pathetic, “—and then I only finished it all when you were due to arrive, so, I figured it wouldn’t do any good—to have you talking on the phone and driving, I mean,” And despite the mild stumble in his long-thought-out sentence, Loki smile a little at the end and pulled it off beguilingly, earning a return grin from Thor for his uncharacteristic expression.

Thor’s thumbs hooked into his front pockets and he looked at Loki expectantly. “Well, what are we going to do now?”

Loki smiled a little wider because it was exactly what he’d wanted to hear. “At the Denny’s, you said you’d only seen the first Lord of the Rings movie . . . ,”

That had been a minor point of contention between them, Loki entirely scandalized that Thor had only “liked it well enough” and had “been too busy” to see the second and third movies when the series was everything he liked in media, and significantly better than Beowulf in every way besides.

To his relief, Thor seemed perfectly amendable to this proposition. “We can stop by Burger King or something on the way to Blockbuster—,”

“That’s not necessary, I own the DVDs.”

“Oh, then, we can watch them at your house—,”

“No, no,” He said hurriedly, realizing uneasily he should’ve mentioned it before Thor could even make such a horrifying suggestion, “that’s not necessary, I brought them with me.”

Loki only realized the wide, gaping hole in his plan as Thor said, “To study at the library?”

But Thor just grinned, like a dog with its tongue lolling. “That’s sounds excellent. Now, were you planning on buying me dinner again?” And he nodded his head back at his car.

 

It was a noble sentiment what he said to Darcy, but in the end it proved to be just that.

It was partially Thor’s fault because the awe Loki felt for him had initially been platonic. For that matter, it had only materialized in the first place because, after trying to avoid every form of committed relationship for the majority of his life, Darcy’s friendship and its eventual abatement had ruined the emptiness inside himself; made claustrophobic the solitude he once sought comfort in. Loneliness filled him like a ghost, and what Thor inspired was nothing more than that specter’s enthusiasm towards the first likable someone willing to reciprocate—and while Thor was not like Darcy at all, his camaraderie filled the same function. He found cleverness and brilliancy in Loki’s words, and rather than becoming offended at a joke at his expense, Thor laughed at Loki’s sarcasm and traded it back to him jovially, abet not as expertly. Loki lied sometimes and Thor either fell for it whole-heartedly, or he smiled curiously without voicing his disbelief; as if lies were something lesser or even charming when they fell from Loki’s mouth—as if it were just the way Loki was that he had to cover up silly things for inexplicable reasons, like where his actual house was and what time he got off from school—and Thor liked it because it was Loki.

 

Loki took to calling on Thor more casually, though simultaneously he waited for Thor to tell him off. Surely he had other friends to spend a Saturday night with.

Loki implied as much to Thor once, one such evening while Thor was making dinner, but had not quite gotten the answer he’d been looking for. “No, no, it is no trouble at all—Jane works most Saturday evenings at the lab—well, she’s there most evenings regardless—anyway you never encroach upon my time, it is nice to have company.”

They found common ground in conversation with one another, and it quickly manifested itself in the form of watching movies. Though perhaps to say they “watched” movies was altogether too tame for what it actually was. Rather, they discussed them—during the course of the movie—because it was practically impossible for Thor to stay silent or complacent throughout. It became very obvious to Loki why Thor found reading to be a generally tedious activity, because when Thor didn’t understand a plot element or a character’s motive, his brain halted and he had to talk about it. When something intense or emotional or unexpected happened or was about to, Thor had to shout and gesticulate and, depending on how invested he was, walk around the room until he calmed down and his attention span returned. It was such that Loki just kept the remote in his hand at all times, to pause it or else Thor would expound right through the film, dialogue and all. They could spend three hours on a movie, from start-to-finish debating and exclaiming and then taking a break to make Manwich—which was in general the extent of dinner at Thor’s.

But Loki had his hands full making time for Thor, so that outside of movie nights they would communicate only minutely, texting throughout the week in order to coordinate their schedules. Saturdays became a given, but normally Loki was also able to find an extra evening or so where he would go to Thor’s apartment after class or work; doing homework on the coffee table in front of the television when he had to, listening for the times when Thor would laugh or exclaim.

In the later months, only ever on Saturdays, when a movie had run too late and Thor insisted it was no trouble, Loki slept on the couch with a blanket and in the morning they had breakfast over a newspaper. The food Thor generally had available didn’t necessarily agree with Loki, but this did not bother him because Loki didn’t like eating until he was too full. Unfortunately, Loki was apparently not very good at articulating his ambivalence, because it did bother Thor terribly, so much so that one evening, he up and took Loki to the grocery store.

Thor had decided their objective would be to leave with nothing but provisions obtained for Loki’s use alone, enough so that they couldn’t use the 12 Items Or Less lane. He was focused as he leaned heavily on the handle of the shopping cart, taking long, slow steps as he scanned the canned food aisle. He had only just gotten off work, dust streaked across the back of his dark blue t-shirt and red brick on the raw knees of his jeans. His hair was a sweaty mess falling from the ponytail, and he combed stringy pieces back from his brilliant eyes with short fingernails caked with paint primer.

Loki was having trouble concentrating on the task at hand, but it seemed that Thor mistook his distractedness for active noncompliance; thirty minutes had passed since their arrival and Loki had failed to choose anything other than a bag of English muffins.

So rather, Thor was beginning to make a game of it, where he would stop to offer an item only when he decided, from the trial and error conducted over the past half hour, that Loki would hate it. He kept picking up variations of sloppy joe mix and Loki’s expression had settled into a dull, blank slate that wavered slightly whenever something original was offered.

He couldn’t decide whether the teasing was too obnoxious, or the attention too luxurious. No matter how hard he tried to rouse himself to take offense, Thor would turn and exclaim and hold aloft a can of Spaghetti O’s, smirking widely, and Loki was diverted by how young and sincere he looked, eyes narrowed with the force of his smile. It was markedly apart from who he actually looked like, how his personality manifested while Loki had watched him at work. Then, Thor was every bit an adult, calm and focused; but here in the canned food aisle, he was a lumbering teenager whose purposefully fatuous humor was unreasonably charismatic and infectious. As Loki lost the battle to not smile again, he was reminded of Thor’s posse of construction workers and thought, This must be how evil men rise to power.

As they passed the frozen meat section, Thor took one look at the lobster tank and then beamed at Loki imploringly.

“You are ridiculous, can we please just drop the act and leave already?”

“Loki, one cannot subsist on bread alone. You didn’t even want jam.”

“I do not feel like jam,” He was spoiled on the kind his father imported from California, but he loathed to admit that to Thor.

“You can’t just not feel like jam, you either prefer it or not at all!”

“Well your theory must be inherently flawed because I do.”

Thor made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat and with a lightning-quick movement collected Loki’s head under one arm. Then he continued pushing the shopping cart down the aisle, half-dragging Loki along after him.

“Ohgodyourarmpit—,”

Thor paused nonchalantly to look at a potato chip display. The young woman behind the lunchmeat counter stared.

“Thor,” Loki’s voice was muffled as he wrenched on the back of Thor’s t-shirt, dried with sweat to the curve of his back.

“Do you like Sour Cream and Onion, Loki?”

“If you don’t let me go I’ll die.”

“There’s no need for theatrics,” Thor said with a sigh, releasing Loki from the headlock and then patting down the bit of his hair that was sticking up. Loki gave him a look to curdle cheese.

“Barbeque, then?”

“You are the prevailing reason they invented deodorant.”

“Salt and Vinegar?”

“And for that matter, I don’t feel that you take advantage of it nearly as much as you ought,” Loki touched his hair uncertainly and pressed the jelled pieces back into place. “That would be fine, thank you.”

When Thor realized what he meant, he gave Loki a grin and an affectionate jolt of the shoulder that justified the headlock and the body odor. Then Thor gathered the entire row of Salt and Vinegar chips in one swoop of his arms and dropped them into the cart.

“Oh god.”

“That should do it,” He said pleasantly, and Loki had to complain and hiss and insult for nearly three minutes before the grinning Thor could be persuaded to drop the joke and return the potato chips to the shelf.

 

It was only normal, Loki reminded himself, when he bothered to notice the ghost at all. After all, when Darcy had first befriended him, he’d even harbored a crush on her. She was a pretty, full-bodied girl, and Loki had been easily impressed with her suave disregard for order and homework, himself vulnerable and awkward in high school because he had only been tutored before then.

But those feelings had faded—that was just what happened, in varying degrees of intensity, whenever he met anyone. He had liked people before Darcy, too, but then he got to know them and became acquainted with their faults; and just as quickly they were unattractive to him. Darcy was different only in that she had not stopped being altogether unbearable, hence the development of their friendship.

So if at first, Loki felt a shadow of that same admiration creeping upon him, it was insignificant—familiar, even. Perhaps Loki even consciously acknowledged it existed, but it was just as he had told Darcy—it didn’t matter. It was going to go away.

 

Part of their relationship hinged on Loki keeping himself tailored into the college student Thor thought he was—a suit of detail and background that fit remarkably well to his tall stature and abnormal maturity. After the first night, when they re-watched Fellowship of the Ring in Thor’s apartment, it became natural for him to carry only two or three textbooks with him at any given time, as if he’d only had a few classes that day; and when Thor began making inquiries into his schedule, Loki began to carry them in a given order, on the same days.

In the beginning, the suit was sometimes too tight, cutting off his air, and sometimes it was too ill-fitted and unseemly. Thor was a people-person, and he did not make the task any easier by asking a great deal of questions.

“Which school do you go to?”

Loki spared him an amused glance to cover up the trepidation suddenly uncurling in his stomach.

“You don’t remember?”

Thor shook his head earnestly. “You never told me!”

Loki had the dignity to look distinctly offended—he crossed his arms and pinned Thor with such a potent look of shock and disgruntlement, Thor’s expression colored with uncertainty, even though this sort of reaction could not be serious given Loki’s character. “Of course I did, I mentioned it when I tried to give you back your suit—,”

Eyebrows made thoughtful furrows in his forehead, before Thor glanced up and said, “You told me what classes you took, not where you took them—nothing more,” He added as Loki opened his mouth to argue.

“That is a lie,” Loki said passionately, and after a moment Thor broke out into a loud peal of laughter. Loki himself was helpless to cover up a snicker, because it felt so good to have Thor get the joke and react so theatrically to it. Darcy hated it when he lied, it would have only frustrated her.

“It must be somewhere nearby—within the city,” Thor said when he got his breath back.

“Perhaps . . . or, I have a private jet—,”

“I might just ask Darcy, you know,” Thor threatened through a smirk.

The terror that came upon him this time was not as intense as in previous cases—Loki was becoming accustomed to controlling it, was getting his footing—and as such, the nerves were easier to squash with a flippant, “Good luck, she barely knows what her own major is, let alone the name of my school.”

Thor shrugged and chuckled again, “That is true,” before his eyes fell to his hands and his smile turned stale and thoughtful. He continued, “Regardless, it is not as if we’d ever have the time. Since their classes resumed, she and Jane have been quite busy as of late . . . ,”

“Doing physics,” Loki agreed, a little darkly.

Thor shrugged. “There’s nothing for it, though.”

“No, there’s not.”

Loki’s expression must have mirrored Thor’s a little more than he’d realized, because when Thor looked up and met his eyes, he reached over and shook Loki’s shoulder gently, crushing him when his hand squeezed. “But it’s only for a little while.”

 

But for someone who asked so much, Thor answered very little in return. At least when Thor gave Loki difficult questions, Loki had the decency to falsify suitable replies. When Loki asked about his suits again—more tactfully—or his funny accent or why he dropped out of college, Thor would shake his head and divert or refuse, clumsily and uncomfortably, but firmly, in a manner which Loki could not follow with words. It was a conundrum because Thor did not seem terribly embarrassed over the way he dressed now, or his meager living accommodations, or the way he talked, or having dropped out of college; on occasion, he even made fun of those things. It was just the circumstances surrounding them that appeared to cause such a un-Thor-like reaction.

“I’m Norwegian,” Thor said exasperatedly.

“So what, your parents thought it would be clever to return to your roots, Mighty Thor?”

“No, I’m Norwegian—I’m from Norway, that is where I was born.”

“Oh,” Loki said articulately. He felt a little stupid, on account of it seeming like Thor had hinted at something along those lines before.

“It’s a very common name there,” Thor continued matter-of-factly.

“Oh of course, I’m sure you were completely normal over there, and it is only here where you are made to suffer for your freakishness,” Loki said and accepted the shove that flattened him against the arm of the couch.

“You’re just spouting off nonsense now,” Thor said pleasantly.

“Why did you leave?”

Thor shrugged. “My father did a lot of business in the United States, and he’d spent a lot of time here and liked it more than Norway, so, we moved.”

Thus far, Thor looked more wistful than depressed, as he took the pause in conversation to inhale more of whatever boxed meal he’d fixed for dinner that time. Loki read it as an invitation to continue in this vein. He faced Thor, relaxing against the arm rest and settling him with a look of polite curiosity.

“Do you miss it, then?”

“Oh—no, not per say. I was quite young at the time. I remember it a little, but I never visited much after we moved.”

“Then you miss your father.”

Loki was sure he wouldn’t get an answer for that. It was too much like overstepping his bounds, like purposefully pointing out that shapeless thing that hovered over Thor when they talked like this. Loki waited quietly, watching for that sad head-shake or the awkward diversion.

Thor tilted his head back and stretched over the back of the couch, half-laying on top of the cushions because he was too large for nearly all furniture he owned. When he spoke, he was quiet and thoughtful. “Yes, I miss him powerfully. Him and my mother.”

“Did they die?” Loki said reflexively, and then immediately after he couldn’t help saying, “I’m sorry—,”

“No, it’s fine,” Thor said, and he gave Loki a conciliatory smile; but he picked up his dishes—and Loki’s too, knowing he was finished even though there was still food on the tray—and took them into the kitchen without another word.

 

But it was Thor’s fault because he went beyond Darcy, and it caught Loki off guard. Because Thor knew Loki lied all the time, but he still took him at his word unless Loki made mistakes and left holes—which became less and less frequent, as Loki’s story became refined. Because Thor was unreasonably affectionate for any human being, and with his friendship came clasps on the shoulder and slaps on the back and awful, embarrassing, brotherly things like headlocks and hair ruffling and wrestling.

When Loki bothered to notice the ghost at all, he took comfort in the fact that it wasn’t getting worse—the only thing was it wasn’t getting any better, either, as the first month passed. If Loki was being truthful with himself, he was more than a little unsettled because he wasn’t accustomed to liking someone for so long, and the subsequent nervousness and loss of confidence that followed invariably such attraction. But then at least it wasn’t getting any worse.

 

“Not even when I was sixteen, in the middle of growth spurts so intense it was painful, were I ever as skinny as you are,” Thor mused in a long breath of silence, their heads bent over a crossword puzzle Thor was ready to shred to pieces. When he wasn’t working, Thor didn’t keep his hair pulled back, and it tended to fall into his face when he looked down, like now, punctuating his quiet observation with one blunt finger tracing a pale blue vein in the underside of Loki’s wrist.

It was the touch that kept Loki from recoiling, and he willed his arms to be still on the awful yellow counter top until Thor withdrew his hand.

“Forgive me if I’m unsurprised,” Loki said dryly, gesturing half-heartedly at Thor where he leaned on his elbows across the bar, “I don’t think I could ever imagine you as less than hulking. Even as a baby—I shudder to think of your poor mother, you must have been a bowling ball.”

“No, no, you misunderstand—I first grew long-ways, so that my chest was not even a foot across but I was almost my full height. You could see my ribs!” He said laughingly, drawing back from the newspaper to lean more casually against the sink, like the very thought was ridiculous. “But still, I never got that thin, as thin as you are . . . ,”

With that, and Thor’s proximity having receded, Loki withdrew his arms into his lap and sat back against the chair. But Thor noticed how the two things coincided, and his expression took on a shade of concern.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Loki said, innocent; he returned his attention to the crossword puzzle in an attempt to maintain the semblance of apathy.

“No really, you—,” Thor tilted his head, his eyes on Loki’s crossed arms, wrists hidden from view. “Is it—do you mind it?”

Loki glanced up with his eyebrows raised. “Please, try to be more vague.”

“Being skinny,” He said, baffled. “That’s not a bad thing, you know. Girls like skinny guys.”

Loki returned to the crossword in earnest now, not really reading the columns and rows. “Not as much as dashing, muscular ones.”

“Just as much at least,” Thor pressed, his head tilting. “Why, one of my best friends, he was all lean muscle and fine bones, and girls loved him . . . ,”

“Hmm, well I see a flaw in your argument straight off, Thor,” Loki said testily, smirking stiffly, “I’m not lean, because in fact I don’t have any muscle tissue at all.”

“Pah—you’ll grow into yourself, just give it time,” Loki snorted dismissively in reply, and it prompted Thor to add, “Besides, you shouldn’t be self-conscious in the first place—you’re attractive without all that, you don’t need to be big and muscular. I can’t imagine where you got the idea in your head . . . ,” Shaking his head, Thor turned away and went to the refrigerator. “Are you ready for breakfast yet? Because I feel that I’m going to die without substance.”

Loki had not the heart to continue disagreeing when faced with how serious Thor had been with that statement—the one about him, not the one about starvation—that he felt well enough to eat all of the hash browns and greasy sausage Thor cooked for him. It was mildly disgusting and Thor grinned.

 

It was a Saturday night and Dragonheart was playing. Loki had saved the movie for that day because he knew Thor would enjoy it particularly, and he wanted to be able to pay full attention, no homework to interfere.

It was unfortunate, then, that Loki’s schedule had been wearing on him the last week. A string of tests in every math-based class he had, coupled with an essay in English, had ensured he slept even less than usual; and as they reclined on the couch he felt the heaviness in his eyes become persuasive. Suddenly he was jerking his head up from where it had begun to fall forward, realizing he was about to doze off. It happened two, three more times, always the slow decent and then the abrupt correction.

Thor was too big and he liked to spread out on the couch besides, a leg propped up on the coffee table and his arms curled around the back of the cushions. At the fourth instance of Loki nearly falling asleep, there was a low sound of humor from Thor’s side of the couch. Loki spared a glance at him, as he turned from the movie in order to smirk at the spectacle Loki was making.

Then Thor slid his arm down and framed Loki’s shoulders, gently crushing his upper-arms in a half-hug, pulling Loki towards him so that he could lean against his shoulder.

As Loki stopped breathing, it occurred to him that in the wake of those few months, he couldn’t think of anything he disliked about Thor—no newfound fault worth mentioning. When he goaded his mind into coming up with something, of course it produced He’s an idiot, but that was only ever meant jokingly, anyway. Thor was remarkably intelligent for a college-dropout construction worker—he had the kind of vocabulary that spoke of good education, at least—and nothing about his ignorance was unattractive; endearing, rather, because he readily admitted when he found his own information to be lacking, and then looked to Loki for answers as if he might know everything.

Loki let his head droop onto Thor’s shoulder and felt all the fight leave him. He took a slow, deep breath. And he decided that no one in the universe was a good enough person to have both Thor and Darcy all to themselves forever, and if Jane Foster couldn’t decide which one she wanted, Loki would make the choice for the both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is really choppy, so I'm sorry about that. Just had so many little miscellaneous character development scenes and decided they would work better if I just shoved them all into one chapter. Thanks for reading!


	5. in which Loki is chastised

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Who the fuck was that?”

 

“Helblindi says you haven’t been using the car,” Laufey said over the top of a newspaper the moment Loki walked into his study. As per usual, the room was pristine—not due to the diligence of the housemaids, because they were strictly not allowed in there, but rather on account of how little it was used. This seemed like the first day all week he’d seen his father in the house.

When Loki did not respond, his father continued, “He said you just send him and Byleistr home some days after school, and then the butler sees you come back late at night, either in a taxicab or walking home,” Laufey folded the paper neatly, eyes following the creases, and squared it on the green velvet cover of his desk. “On the weekends, Miss Gretchen doesn’t even know you’ve gone until she sees the cab pull away, and then you don’t even come home until afternoon the next day,” Then, looking up at him, “What are you playing at?”

It was not that Loki had never anticipated the fact that Laufey had eyes and ears in all crevices of the city, and that someone might recognize Loki one day and alert this father; it was that those he _had_ expected to notice and expected to remain silent—those people close to him, who hated Laufey, or liked Loki, or had seen enough of their relationship to stay out of it—had gone in defiance of that calculation. Betrayed that trust.

Now he was grasping at straws, his mind working in such a state of furious activity that for once, silence was his only answer. Laufey sighed in aggravation and lent back in his plush leather chair.

“You have nothing to say? You won’t even try to lie?”

That was what gave Loki the idea.

“Not really. In the end it doesn’t matter what I’m doing,” Laufey narrowed his eyes and Loki continued quickly before he was misunderstood, “Because if I was going out snorting cocaine, you would care because of the inevitable decline of my grades and health. But if that same thing was happening, only because I was spending too much time volunteering at, say, an animal shelter, you would look down on that just as much as the drugs. The activity is irrelevant, what others care about is how negatively it affects the person who does it; and some things come with a more negative connotation than others, regardless of whether in the context of a given individual it is actually harmful or not. So what you should be asking yourself is not what I am doing, but rather is it having negative side effects on my life. Have you checked my grades recently?”

It was a mostly rhetorical question; Laufey’s second secretary did so every day. His father stared at him impassively, fingers laced in his lap.

“Then that should be your first indication that this concern is entirely irrelevant.”

“If it should be something that would embarrass me—,”

“It is no such thing, that would fall under having negative side effects. It’s just something I wish to keep to myself. You know me to be a private person.”

“. . . Maybe I haven’t been very clear in this conversation, and that’s my fault—I’ve behaved as if you might have had a choice in the matter. Tell me what you’ve been doing—,”

“No,” Loki said, half-way through Laufey’s sentence.

His father paused, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.

“Fine, then. I have a lot of work to do, you’re dismissed.”

Loki was so shocked that the argument had ended—just _ended_ —that he didn’t move for a moment. When his brain caught up and he turned to flee, he could only think of how nothing in life was that easy, especially in the context of Laufey. It was far worse than losing any argument.

That night Loki laid awake for some hours, contemplating his father’s motives for letting the dispute go, whether he had some ulterior motive; but decided finally that whatever Laufey was planning—if he was indeed planning and not just waiting for Loki to make a wrong move and disprove himself—then he would be powerless to stop it anyhow. When nothing else worked, he thought of Thor to calm himself. He even entertained the maddening prospect that, if Thor really had been the type of person to wear a nice suit and a silk shirt, there would have been no issue of letting Laufey know of him. But this only made it worse, and in the end it took a glass of Benadryl to make Loki finally fall asleep. 

 

At the beginning of winter, in the end of November, when they had started to run out of movies they thought the other might like and a little before Laufey’s confrontation, Thor began to take him out walking.

It seemed rather like poor timing for them to only start going on walks once the weather had begun to freeze and the night began to fall early. But that being said, the cold had never actually bothered Loki, and Thor confessed to liking the crisp, chilly air; so some evenings when Loki showed up at his apartment, Thor would be lacing up his work boots in a heavy coat, and they would go to the city park for an hour or more. Sometimes Loki wasn’t wearing the right clothes, and Thor would lend him his second Carhartt, smelling thickly of earth and someone who did a lot of manual labor.

Sometimes it was the better option either way because Thor thought his peacoat was funny.

“The buttons are so large,” He said humorously, reaching over to pluck at the round black fastenings sewed down the front. Loki slapped him away irately.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand fashion,” He said dryly, but Thor snickered at him and tried next to tug on his scarf, visible underneath the collar of the coat.

“You’re wearing a scarf—,” He began.

“You’re so observant sometimes it hurts.”

“—but it looks too thin to be of much warmth.”

“Yes, Thor—that’s because it’s only an accessory.”

Thor began to speak, but stifled himself before it took form. Instead, he gave Loki a long, sheepish look that made the other glare in warning.

“An, accessory?”

“Try to contain yourself.”

“ _No_ , no, I didn’t mean anything—,” Thor said, the laughter in his voice betraying his attempt to remain neutral in expression.

“If you must know,” Loki began haughtily, “the pattern is called houndstooth. It’s very masculine.”

Thor’s playful scorn softened at Loki’s displeasure, and he smiled apologetically. “It sounds quite dashing.”

“Quite.”

“With it on, you are significantly more impressive—the picture of masculine beauty, to say the least.”

“Mmm.”

But Loki was still embarrassed, and because he refused to show that emotion, he made at being offended. Loki told himself he didn’t care if it seemed foppish or effeminate, that he looked excellent in his peacoat and scarf, that was the style and Thor could go to hell. For something to do, he braced his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, turning away, looking down the path they’d come at empty trees and dying, groomed grass.

“It is in fact so very impressive,” Thor continued, inching himself into Loki’s periphery, “they ought to use it in—the military,” Loki glanced at him then, his eyebrows raised. “For camouflage,” Thor concluded, smiling prettily.

“That’s ridiculous. Quit trying so hard.”

“Oh, Loki!” A hand slammed into his back affectionately, momentarily stopping his heart. “Pray forgive me, and dwell not on mine words but rather on the beauty of the evening sky.”

When Loki raised his eyebrows at Thor this time, it was out of confusion instead of contempt, at the strange diction and the slight change in accent. It only egged the Thor on.

“T’would be poor sport to squander a moon so great and glorious on the count of a petty feud between friends!”

“I am legitimately finding it difficult to determine whether you’re speaking normally or not.”

“Doth Shakespeare offend thee, Fair Loki?”

Loki snorted. “Fair? Really?”

“Forsooth,” and then, almost hurriedly, “I only sayist this because thou art most pale.”

“I don’t think you even know what forsooth _means_.”

“ _Loki_! Wherefore art thou so cross?”

Loki was so fed up with it, he shoved Thor’s shoulder with both hands. It just made Thor smile wider.

“Oh please, I doubt you’d even be able to sit through something like Shakespeare.”

“That is falsehood!” When Loki rolled his eyes, Thor said fondly, “My mother loved plays,” and then Loki felt too bad to glare at him.

“Really?”

“She took me to the theatre all the time because Father was normally too busy to go with her, and Shakespeare was our favorite—we saw Shakespeare whenever it came into town.”

“Like what, I suppose?”

“Oh, well, the comedies, and the historical dramas, and the tragedies—I suppose we were not particular. _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ were our favorites.”

“Oh, please,” And at Thor’s raised eyebrows he elaborated, “You had me there until the last one.”

Thor scoffed, his eyebrows turning up. “It’s a classic!”

“It’s about one under-aged, stupid teenager pining after an older, stupider teenager,” And to bury thoughts of him sitting there with Thor he added, “I don’t like MTV.”

“It’s not like _that_ , they were meant for each other, it was fate—,”

“They were horny,” Loki said coldly, and at that Thor broke down into laughter.

The manner of this conversation was not unlike the kind they kept during movies, of which debate constituted a large portion. But Loki was still sore and suspicious—it was only Saturday, and last Monday was not yet so far away—the stress of his fight with Laufey making him irritable in the first place, tainting what would normally have been a cordial dispute and twisting his words into combative things.

“ _Hamlet_ , or _Julius Caesar_ —those are good plays. _Romeo and Juliet_ is just some overtly sexual drivel Shakespeare designed to entertain the poor, uneducated Elizabethan masses.”

At this harsh claim, Thor’s fervor returned. “You’ve got to be joking! Perhaps you can disdain the plot or the characters as silly, but the words—it’s has some of the most eloquent poetry he ever wrote.”

“That’s debatable.”

“The hell it is—the scene of the sword fight? The scene of the balcony? For shame, Loki! It’s beautiful!”

“It has _no_ _theme_.”

“It has heart, it doesn’t need theme!”

“ _You’re_ just a romantic.”

“And you’re just a snob,” Thor said belligerently, though his eyes crinkled at the corners all the same. “You’ve never truly read it if you think it has no theme, no merit whatsoever—,”

“If you’re so well-read, how is it that you’re a construction worker?” And immediately Loki felt bad for saying it. He looked away from Thor, staring unseeingly at the sky as he said too quickly, “No I didn’t mean it like that, like you don’t know what you’re talking about—I mean to say _why_ did you become a construction worker when you’re so educated. You were the type of person who went to see Shakespeare with your mother, what happened that—that you have to eat _Manwich_?”

“I like Manwich.”

“But you shouldn’t _have_ to like Manwich,” Loki replied with a little more fervor than what was necessitated by the subject matter; but then, he wasn’t really talking about Manwich when he said that, either.

Laufey would have consented to his spending time with someone in a suit. But not a construction worker.

“. . . It is as I said, I dropped out of college.”

“I wore your suit, Thor, I know it’s not that simple,” Loki said, a little scathingly. “Why don’t you talk to your parents anymore?”

“Why do you make me drop you off at a false house?” Thor replied.

Loki conceded that he deserved that.

“I am aware that you’re wealthy—you haven’t made any real effort to conceal _that_ information from me,” Severity made Thor’s voice slow, almost patient, as his eyes borrowed into the side of Loki’s face; but Loki was still afraid to look. “But I suppose you would prefer to not let me know the nature of your wealth, so you stop me early and then walk somewhere else down the street. I know this, but I never follow you, as I respect your reasons for keeping it to yourself. So with that in mind, it would be good of you to do the same for me and drop it,” Then the commanding tone was ruined with a humble, “Please.”

Loki didn’t relax until he felt Thor’s gaze shift, and even then it was only to lean back against the bench and crank his neck back at the black sky, the clouds pillowing out in a circle from the round moon.

“I don’t know how you can stand it.”

Thor understood what he meant.

“It’s not as bad as you’d think. I like my job—coming home tired every night feels good. It’s satisfying.”

“ . . . But the apartment, and the _food_ —,”

“The food is not that bad, you’re a picky eater,” The warmth had come back into Thor’s voice, but Loki stared straight up at the bone-dry moon. “And the apartment is all the space I need.”

“You shouldn’t have to . . . ,”

“I _enjoy_ it, Loki,” Loki flinched when Thor laughed, humorlessly. “After all that, that excess, living simply is cathartic. You know, maybe you ought to wonder why _you_ come over all the time. You don’t have to stay the night or eat my terrible food.”

For a moment, Loki suspected Thor had found him out.

“Maybe _you_ enjoy the lifestyle a little more than you realize.”

But of course he wouldn’t get it.

“. . . There are benefits, to money, though. Like your plays. You can’t just disregard that.”

“I don’t have to go to a play every weekend to enjoy Shakespeare. Besides, didn’t he write for the—what did you say, the poor, uneducated masses?” Thor said pointedly, and Loki finally turned to face him then, a little indignant and a little apologetic, saying, “You know I didn’t mean it like _that_.”

Thor smiled back. “He wrote for rich, dashing people, too. That’s the point, that anyone can take pleasure in it and relate to it,” He punched Loki in the shoulder. “It’s one of the traits of a good _theme_.”

Loki made a face and rolled his head back again to look at the sky. He worried the buttons on his peacoat. “Ah, but then it would make sense he would at least appeal to ‘ _dashing_ ’ men, in a sense of the word—scholars think he was gay, you know.”

Thor contemplated the word, then shrugged. “You don’t have to be gay to be well-dressed—I don’t think you’re gay, Loki,” He said hurriedly, as if he thought this was the reason Loki had been affronted the whole time.

Loki didn’t exactly have anything to say to that, and he didn’t know what to think about it himself; but after a moment he realized Thor was expecting an answer, so without turning he said, “I know that, you. Don’t be so obnoxiously morose.”

“I am no such thing!” He exclaimed. The smile was back in his voice.

Not long after that, they decided to walk back. One of Thor’s coworkers had lent him the first season of a TV show, and he had waited to start it until Loki could come over. Loki had always been skeptical of anything made especially for television, but he thought it might be worth it if he got an excuse to stay the night. Besides, complaining suited him as much as actually enjoying something did.

But as they exited the shelter of the dead trees and took to the sidewalk, a low, dark car appeared from around a corner, roaring past them and then screeching to a stop on the side of their street a little ahead of them. Its engine revved conspicuously in the empty neighborhood.

The two shared a look, and Thor acted like he meant to reverse their positions to shield Loki from the strange car—but Loki recognized the make and the tinted glass immediately and grabbed Thor’s arm to hold him in place. As they began to pass the car, its passenger window rolled down, revealing Byleistr’s scowling face. The driver, Helblindi, leaned forward over the steering wheel to look, his disposition about as agreeable as the other.

“Get in,” Byleistr growled at Loki, though he was staring at Thor, and Loki said, “This is entirely unnecessary.”

“Yeah, yeah, take it to your old man, we’re on orders from him. So get in.”

There it was, then. The catch.

“So what if I don’t.”

When both of them dragged their gaze from Thor and turned their glares on him, Loki knew he didn’t have a choice. Laufey’s instructions had been not just to follow him, then, and they only asked this out of concern; they were meant to extract him in addition.

So Loki begrudgingly went to the side door and opened it, folding himself into the Lincoln with a little delicacy because Byleistr was so tall he had to move the seat far back to fit himself. Loki only looked at Thor when he went to shut the door, and only maintained eye contact long enough to mutter “ _Sorry_ ” before Helblindi put his foot down and the car lurched forward.

Thor didn’t say anything back, he just looked on as the door slammed shut with the strength of acceleration.

Helblindi put the radio on and Loki slipped down in the seat, arms cross over his chest petulantly as he stared out the window. Polka music mixed with Byleistr’s dulcet voice.

“Who the fuck was that?”

Loki stared out the window.

“Hey!” When Byleistr put in the effort to turn himself around, shoulders squished between the seat and the dashboard, Loki let his eyes flicker to him. “Who the _fuck_ was that?”

“Please, Byleistr, control yourself, there’s no need for all that. He’s only a mass-murdering psychopath—don’t judge,” Loki added as Byleistr’s face twisted with the sarcasm, “ _you_ of all people should know it takes all sorts, and everyone has that one weird friend,” He inclined his head pointedly.

Loki flattened against the leather seat when Byleistr got angry enough to swat at him from his awkward, twisted position. Helblindi elbowed the bodyguard, swerving the car a little, and Byleistr relented, forcing his anger back a simmer. He tried a different approach.

“Are we your brothers or not?”

This was a loaded question, one whose answer he normally knew well. Helblindi and Byleistr had been gifted to him by his father when he was quite young, because his mother had just left and Loki needed more supervision than what Miss Gretchen could provide on her own. And with primary custody, Laufey was able to supply the kind of inexpensive help his ex-wife had always frowned upon being hired at the house; the kind that came from the business.

When Byleistr and Helblindi had first been introduced, Byleistr said to the butler, “Nah, nah, we’re too young to be his uncles,” as he smoothed back his thinning hair, already middle-aged then. He lent down and patted Loki’s bony shoulder, grinning conspiratorially. “Anyone ask you, we’re your _brothers_.”

Because he was angry with them, Loki invented about twelve inconsiderate things to say about the truth of their familial ties in the first five seconds of silence; but in the end decided that the two of them were too volatile at present and he ought not to press them in such a way. So, unable to come up with a response which did not insult them nor grant them supplication, Loki took the conversation in another direction.

“You know, I expected this kind of irrational behavior from my father, but the fact that you two have flown off the handle like this is a little surprising. He is not so different than you, you might even get along fine.”

“Tch, some creepy fuck skulkin’ around in the middle of the night—?”

“We go on walks for pleasure, but it’s not like that’s how I _met_ him . . . ,”

“Well what am I supposed to think?” Byleistr pleaded, his hands braced on his chest like it pained him, “Here we are, supposed to watch after you, _been_ watching after you since I don’t even _know_ when, but then all of a sudden you start sending us off, like we don’t _matter_ to you, like we ain’t got a _responsibility_ towards you—,”

“I’m nearly an adult, for Christ’s sake,” Loki interrupted dully.

“You’re a freaking teenager _for Christ’s sake_ ,” When Helblindi elbowed Byleistr again, Byleistr tried a different way of phrasing. “You’ve got enemies, you can’t go around unprotected, for hours, for a whole _day_ , like nobody’s gonna recognize you sometime—lemme ask you something, lemme ask you something, where did you meet this asshole, eh? Where’s his _credentials_?”

It was almost unbearably hilarious listening to someone like _Byleistr_ , someone who was very much a part of the business side of the company from his repugnant accent to his obviously fake name, complaining about “credentials”; but Loki managed to smother the bitter laughter before his shoulders even shook.

“. . . If you must know, he’s in construction. I met him while he worked on the street where I intern at.”

“On Fifth Street—? Bastard,” Byleistr said as if Fifth Street had some sort of reputation.

“You don’t know that he’s who he says he is,” Helblindi interjected, slowly. He didn’t speak much unless he believed it was important—unlike Byleistr who could tangent for hours—so Loki let him finish his thought. “And it’s troubling that you wanted to hide from us.”

“Yeah, like you got something to _hide_ ,” Byleistr said, barreling back into the conversation.

“I only ‘hid’ because I thought you might tell _him_ ,” Loki said scathingly, sneering with the next sentence, “But you went ahead and did that anyway, I see.”

“Yeah? Or maybe this guy’s an _asshole_ and _you_ didn’t want us to know he was.”

“Or maybe he’s a _construction worker_ and for that stupid little fact my father would ruin the first friendship I’ve—why on earthwould I hang out with him, if he’s an _asshole_?” Loki said disbelievingly.

Loki had meant it more-or-less as a rhetorical question, but it had an unusual effect on Byleistr.  His face contorted strangely and he became inexplicably speechless, before turning back around in his seat for the first time since the start of the argument.

Loki glared suspiciously between the back of their silent heads, and finally Helblindi was forced to say, “We’ve been worried about you, Loki.”

“Not, not _about_ you per say, _you’re_ fine—,” Byleistr said hurriedly and Helblindi followed with, “No, no—,”

The silence began anew and it filled with the combined frustration of Loki and his bodyguard, Helblindi being too stoic for that sort of thing.

“I mean—,” Byleistr tried again, but Helblindi must not have trusted him with the subject because again he interrupted, “It seems strange for you to just up and make friends is all—‘specially with someone, who you might not have anything in common with—,”

And when Loki realized what they thought, he was furious.

“Are you daft?” He half-yelled, “Why does _everyone_ think—I’m not _gay_!”

“I never said that!” Byleistr said hurriedly.

“You can both go to hell!”

“We didn’t mean you _was_ gay, we just—we thought maybe—,”

“Do I have to be a hermit for the rest of my life? Is that what everyone expects of me, is that how _low_ everyone’s opinion is of me, that if I ever even _seem_ to get social life it must be based on _carnal_ _attraction_ —?”

“It’s just that it was out of the blue is all!” Byleistr half-yelled as he turned back around, and Loki unsuccessfully tried to smother his anger, evoke some shred of sympathy, at the repentant and highly uncomfortable look on his bodyguard’s face. “If it were a kid from school or something it woulda’ been no problem—,”

“That’s a lie, you’re so full of—,”

“You don’t know him, Loki!” Byleistr snarled, his frustration finally overpowering the guilt; Loki wasn’t quick enough this time and Byleistr’s thick hand fisted in the knot of Loki’s scarf, shaking him. “Even if he ain’t in a gang then he’s in it for himself, and if somebody paid him off, or he sold you out, and you got _killed_ , I don’t know what I’d do, so—it ain’t about being a fag or what, so you can’t get out of it that way. It’s not happening and that’s the end of it.”

 

That night he ended up in front of his father’s desk again.

Byleistr and Helblindi had gone in ahead of him, leaving Loki outside the doorway for a time, and when they reappeared, Byleistr jerked his head towards the study and clapped him on the back before following Helblindi down the hallway.

Laufey had no paper this time, nor any files set across the velvet in a play at working. He was watching the door as Loki stepped into the study, and he began immediately, “You see what you’ve brought us to, Loki?”

“I didn’t _make_ you do anything.”

“Really. Well, Helblindi and Byleistr have confirmed my observation that you have too much time on your hands.”

Brothers. _Hah_.

“I must disagree, Father. In fact I have very little time at all.”

 But Laufey continued as if Loki hadn’t spoke, “It’s becoming painfully apparent how right you were, back in August.”

Loki raised his eyebrows.

“The internship at present is much too simple for you, and I don’t see how you’re getting any experience when you work only two days a week. It’s obvious that your school work is not as difficult as I had imagined, certainly not enough to keep you occupied all that time . . . ,”

“I have to insist, a little personal time is not wasted in one’s schedule, rather it is generally critical to maintaining a healthy—,”

“A few hours every day is healthy. A few days every week is wasteful. I’m putting you under one of my managers in production, you’ll work with him until seven every day after school. Helblindi is the only one who’s allowed to drive you around, no more taxis or I’ll revoke your credit card; and you are to have Byleistr at least in the same building as you at all times.”

Loki closed his eyes for a moment, to reign in his glower and maintain his apathy, his control. He had worn indifference for this occasion deliberately, had carved it from his face in the few minutes he’d waited outside for a purpose. He didn’t want to appear angry, though he was seething, nor anything as pathetic as surprised; Loki wanted to make it clear he had anticipated something like this happening. He wanted to be sure that, when there were consequences to what Laufey was doing to him now, it only happened because Laufey had forced the issue.

“Yes, Father,” Loki said, and left the office silently and obediently when dismissed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Byleistr and Helblindi are in the tags now, but this is their only significant appearance, so. There's that. 
> 
> Finals are over. Oh my goodness. Thank you for your patience.


	6. in which Loki is discouraged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If he could just get through today, he had thought—but then it wasn’t really that simple.

His job was to start on Monday directly, and he was placed under the supervision of a middle-aged man who was very good at kissing ass. In fact, he displayed such a preternatural ability to do so in the first hour of Laufey introducing them, that it was physically exhausting for Loki to maintain his manners. Loki spent an inordinate amount of time contemplating how satisfying it would be to _break_ the man—an effective enough coping mechanism.

It was in this manner that the plan took shape over the next week, as Loki shadowed the ass-kisser and learned how to do his job. Small, arbitrary details were collected and pieced together in his head like photos pinned to a corkboard, connected by the string of his thoughts— _it will arrive late if you order it after such-and-such_ , _it costs less money with the medium package, always compete x before you move onto y,_ never _do this_ —and eventually they began to form a picture.

 

Loki didn’t text Thor after the events of Saturday, so on Wednesday Thor tentatively asked, > _Are you coming over on saturday or are you in trouble?_

Perhaps he didn’t want to put Loki off, or perhaps he didn’t want to have a conversation about what had happened last weekend over text messaging; but in any case, Loki was grateful that Thor wasn’t asking the specifics yet as he replied, > _I’m not in trouble, but I won’t be able to this week. I’ll talk to you later._

Thor was complacent at that, and did not bother Loki the rest of the week, correctly interpreting that not being able to make Saturday meant he was extremely busy. But the next Wednesday it was the same, > _How about now?_

> _No, actually, I’ve been very busy. Perhaps next weekend._

At this point Thor became worried.

> _Are you certain everythings fine?_

> _Of course it is. I’ll text you next week if I am able._

 

The following month passed astonishingly fast. Loki devoured the ins-and-outs of ordering raw materials for every kind of product, and then also the process of conveying them to manufacturing; he took notes, and then studied them in his free time. He burned through homework with unparalleled efficiency and focus, artfully using his days off during the weekend to do one-point-five times as much as he normally managed. He had some of the best sleep in his life.

Loki texted Thor at a reduced rate because he needed to maintain his drive, and Thor asking and asking over his availability and health was a heady thing; a drug, something to taste just enough to get the high that would push him forward, but not nearly enough to crash him into the ground, though he wanted it to. But that would do nothing but ruin his careful planning.

Thor wasn’t just his first friend since Darcy, or someone he could stare at for uncomfortably long stretches of time; he was symbolic for what Loki’s life could be, apart from the business and steeped in physics and entirely untouched by Laufey. Loki had never had something before that his father had not given him nor twisted into something “suited” for him, unrecognizable. That was why Loki fought so hard this time, because he didn’t see himself getting another chance to take control of himself before it was too late.

So he charmed the ass-kissing man right back, he matched him complement for complement and smile for smile. He did not just prove his competency for the work and for management, he flaunted his gift for it. He raised efficiency by one percent in his first fifteen days. When the ass-kisser went to Laufey and poured his little heart out in praise for Loki, he was not entirely exaggerating. Had he not knowingly engineered their closeness, Loki himself might have even believed in the strength of their companionship.

And barely even a month after starting, Loki had the obtained the leverage and sewed the right seeds, sabotaged the right supports to allow himself to exert his influence in the right moment. It was beautiful, in a way, because it was infallibly simple. It was just a few words of false foresight to several different sheep, who would have questioned had they heard him say such to each one of them, but who individually did not suspect a thing; followed with a confident piece of advice given to the ass-kisser, who, when the sheep began to bleat at the purposefully mis-filed order, made Loki’s call—and set off a subtle array of dominos that brought the entire sector to its knees, in chaos.

Loki cost the company over 1.2 million dollars.

 

When all the dominos lay still and the sheep were left reeling with the force of impact, scrambling to and fro to heft the support beam back in place before production slowed even more and their stock dropped again, Laufey called Loki and the ass-kisser into his office; the latter of whom was nearly in tears.

But the two of them surprised Loki by not blaming him in the slightest. Perhaps it was impossible for the ass-kisser to see through Loki’s sincerity, but even _his father_ , though drawn and pale and irritable, did not focus his criticism on Loki, when Loki had all but immediately confessed to making the costly avalanche of mistakes (though he did not voice his involvement in first, crucial mis-order). Laufey took Loki to task sparingly, in a tired, exasperated manner that spoke of teaching rather than chastising; going to the effort of explaining in-depth the little flaws in judgment, the places where Loki and the ass-kisser had made mistakes. Laufey looked at Loki with regret, but it was the kind which was not laced with anger or disappointment. Understanding and forgiveness bloomed in the lines of his face. Uneasily, Loki began to think that maybe his father wouldn’t just mark him for a failure and exclude him from the company, a greater loss than a potential asset.

It reminded Loki of what Thor had said after that first car ride. About Laufey loving him.

Loki looked at the sad eyes of his father and felt pity, because if that was the case then maybe the misunderstanding between them could have been avoided. But the time where Laufey might have circumvented wronging Loki had long since passed, and there was nothing his father could do for him now that would change his mind. Because in the end, Laufey wanted him to be a part of the business, and Loki had already decided, pressed to desperation in his father’s unused office, that no one would make him do something he didn’t want to ever again—not even someone who loved him.

Forgiveness was not in the design of his plan. Forgiveness was poisonous to its very purpose, and only perpetuated Loki’s thralldom to his father. So when Laufey finished his remorseful speech, Loki met his gaze and smirked triumphantly.

All emotion slipped off Laufey’s face and without another word, the ass-kisser was sent out of the room.

“I can’t even imagine _why_ ,” Laufey said after a moment, softly.

“It is nothing so esoteric,” And then Loki decided that at least on this point, he could be frank with his father. “I wanted to, because you made me angry.”

Laufey relaxed back into his chair, laughing curtly at the betrayal.

“You are such a child,” He hissed.

Loki just looked at him, his eyes bright, his blood singing in his veins with accomplishment and anticipation.

“He’ll be fired, you know,” Laufey continued, a hand rubbing at his eyes, “For what you did to him. For being stupid enough to believe you.”

“He was a useless creature, too incompetent to do his job right and too good at keeping it through false complements. I’ve done you a favor, he might have done as much on his own one day and then let another take the fall for it.”

“. . . Well, then, it’s fortunate you said something to me. Because I promise, I’ll see that the one responsible for it pays his dues. You’re better than this.”

“I am what you made me,” Loki said, feeling lightheaded and a little hysterical. Having always feared disappointment, his body reacted of its own accord, and he dug his fingernails into the soft skin of his forearms where they were crossed behind his back, hanging onto his composure like a lifeline. He reminded himself, this was all part of the plan. Get through this part and then everything will turn out. A lifetime of bowing his head to his father’s wishes about to pay off.

 

It was not nearly as bad as Loki had thought. The cabbie didn’t even look at him too closely.

It occurred to him that it might be a little late in the evening for this sort of thing, but after checking his watch for the first time in hours, Loki realized his father and Miss Gretchen had not kept him that long. And either way, he doubted Thor would mind too much—it was only Thursday. It was practically the weekend already.

But Loki didn’t realize just how much of an effect he would garner turning up unannounced with his disheveled appearance, until Thor answered the door and his first reaction was to grab Loki’s shoulders with both hands. Loki tried not to sag into the contact.

“Oh Loki, you—you are not well at all!” He just looked at Thor, the perfect blue of his shocked eyes and the long hair falling haphazardly from its ponytail, and when Thor realized Loki wasn’t really paying attention, he growled, “You lied to me.”

“Are you going to let me in or not?” Loki croaked.

Thor led him to the couch like he was an invalid, which was ridiculous, he was perfectly well and was only damaged in a cosmetic sense—his hair all in disarray from its normally jelled look and his shirt crumpled and un-tucked, the tie mysteriously missing. His expression was surely what was distressing Thor the most, because Loki couldn’t quite bring himself to put it back to normal, to cool, composed indifference. The slack feeling of nothingness on his face was almost surreal it was so unused.

Loki allowed himself to be pushed onto the couch without complaint, but he didn’t meet Thor’s eyes as the other hovered uncertainly, evidently at a loss of what to do next. “Have you eaten yet?” he tried. “I have pasta, and vodka sauce. Didn’t you like vodka sauce when last I made it?”

“I should like it more if it had actual vodka in it,” Loki murmured, only half-joking, and Thor smacked him on the shoulder rousingly.

“Pah, you’re not fooling me— _you’re_ not old enough to drink.”

Loki raised his eyebrows and waited for the reasoning behind it.

“I’m almost certain you’re a freshman—even at the very most, you can’t be twenty!”  Thor exclaimed, and Loki dropped his head into his lap, sighing.

Thor took it as an invitation to ruffle his ruined hair, and then walked into the kitchen with purpose. Loki got the impression Thor didn’t know how to deal with sad people, which was why his movements were so mechanical beneath the almost inappropriate veil of sanguinity, starkly juxtaposed against Loki’s pitiful state.

“I’m not a freshman,” He began experimentally, “I’m actually a junior.”

“Pah!” Thor said good-naturedly, mistaking the truth for an attempt at humor, and turned from the bowels of his narrow refrigerator to throw Loki a wide smirk. Then he returned to his task, presumably to look for vodka sauce.

With Thor thusly occupied, clattering around the kitchen and putting water on to boil, Loki was left to his thoughts in a way he hadn’t been all night. At least before, there had been people yelling at him; and even in the cab, he could concentrate on the thought of seeing Thor and how long it’d been since they’d last talked properly. Now the shock was wearing off and the pain was coming into focus, a ragged edge of realization opening. If he could just get through today, he had thought—but then it wasn’t really that simple. Laufey wasn’t content to just release him from the company, there would be other disciplinary actions, and beyond tonight all he could see were days and days of house arrest—nothing like freedom, just slow and agonizing tedium. The only reason Loki had gotten a cab at all had been because of his debt card, the one Laufey didn’t know about; all his other accounts were already frozen.

He alternated between convincing himself that now Laufey wouldn’t care about him, that now _Loki_ could choose what he did with his time under the supervision of an apathetic parent; but then Loki was certain his father would not stand for that, he would take his revenge and ensure that Loki had even less privilege than what Thor could afford, that he would never go to college and maybe be thrown into public school, or chained in the basement for the rest of his life. Loki had only ever seen Laufey treat disobedience with wrath, towards the dealers who skimmed off the top of his coke or kept money back from transactions. The only time he had ever seen Laufey’s mercy had been today, and Loki had spat it back in his face.

Then Thor crowded him with a plate of steaming, orange pasta and Loki said, “I don’t like—,”

“It’s pasta, Loki,” Thor said, a little worriedly.

“I don’t like farfalle.”

“Well this is bowtie pasta, it says so on the box.”

“That’s _farfalle_.”

“Loki, it’s, it’s _all_ made the same way, from the same ingredients, and you ate the rigatoni . . . ,” he tried exasperatedly.

“Well I like rigatoni, I _don’t_ like farfalle.”

Thor let out a big breath of air, the floor shaking a little as his knees hit the ground beside the couch, and then Loki flinched as one of Thor’s large hands clasped the side of his neck; fully expecting a disciplinary action until fingers pushed into the short hairs at his nape and the palm squeezed gently. He allowed his head to be tilted up until he was looking Thor in the face, Thor’s furrowed eyebrows and clenched jaw together affecting a frustrated expression softened with concern.

“Loki, please,” He said. Sincerity in his eyes and his voiced silenced whatever smartass comment Loki felt the compulsion to make, and instead he watched Thor transfixed. “I only mean to help. I do not expect you’d want to confide in me, so I have not asked what happened to you, but, you should at least allow me to try and help,” The rough pad of a thumb scraped the corner of Loki’s jaw lightly and then curled behind the shell of his ear. “I have been worried for you.”

Hot, itchy emotion began to rise in Loki’s eyes. His whole face felt raw and drawn and then he couldn’t swallow well enough to get the words out.

“You don’t need to, I—,” Loki struggled to clear his throat.

Thor was saying, gently but firmly, “I may if I wish, and that means you _will_ eat the bowtie pasta—,” just as Loki rasped, “I wrecked a part of my father’s company.”

Then, “ _What_?”

“He did not approve of me spending so much time outside of school—,” Loki refrained from saying _with you_ , “—so he had me working all my extra time helping one of his managers, and I set him up to lose a huge shipment of raw materials which prevented us from filling a major contract on-time, so that our customer cancelled the order and switched to our competitor, and I confessed so that Father would get rid of me.”

“Wh—that’s a little _much_ , Loki!”

“It was necessary, he wouldn’t leave me alone if I didn’t give him a terrible enough reason.”

Loki could see Thor trying to put into words that there must have been a way to reason with Laufey, so he continued, halting in some places and too quickly in others, “It’s not, the _first_ time we’ve disagreed— _he_ wants me to go into business and I _hate_ business, but I am his only child so he has some insipid, preconceived notion that I musttake over the company, as if keeping it in our family keeps his legacy alive or, or _something_ ,” Loki hated the idea that Thor didn’t understand, and that the only thing he saw in him was recklessness and cruelty, so he grabbed Thor’s arm, encircling the wrist that touched his face. “If my father didn’t hate me, he wouldn’t let me alone. Please,” The heat in his eyes pushed over and fell in a drop to his mouth where he tasted it, bitter and lukewarm. “Don’t make me eat the farfalle.”

His loss of composure produced a more striking effect in Thor than his logic had. Thor’s head drooped forward, his eyebrows mostly sad now. He rubbed the back of Loki’s neck and said soothingly, “I will not make you eat the farfalle,” in a breath that touched Loki’s nose and cooled the streak down his face.

It was enough, in his low, desperate state—when even Helblindi had looked upon him in disappointment that night, but Thor held his face—that Loki thought nothing of leaning forward and pressing a kiss to Thor’s mouth. But he was unnerved and inexperienced, and it only touched the bristly corner.

Loki’s eyes had fallen closed, and as he pulled away they opened unbidden, looking upon Thor’s reaction hungrily and traitorously, though Loki wanted nothing more than to fling himself down and annihilate into photons than know what Thor might say.

There was nothing of shock or horror or disgust in Thor’s expression—nothing calculable, nothing Loki could react to and diffuse. Rather, a slow, calm understanding flowed smooth across his face, appraising Loki as one who saw the tumblers of a keyhole clicking into place or the way the correct variable satisfies an equation. His hand slipped from Loki’s neck—Loki released Thor’s wrist like the contact burned him—and settled on his shoulder lightly.

“I—You are not feeling well. You’re not thinking,” When Loki opened his mouth to retort, Thor’s grip tightened, halting him. “It’s fine if you do not wish to eat, but you should sleep then. It would do you good, I think.”

Disappointment replaced mortification. Rather than anger or (a more frivolous wish) reassurance or _anything_ , Thor had just brushed it off, had turned it aside like it was nonexistent; and in a way that was so much worse, because Loki had kept this thing inside him for so long, letting it rattle against his bones, and when finally revealed it turned out it didn’t really matter after all. Disappointment made him weak and removed, to where Loki relented to being led again, this time into the bedroom. Apparently, Thor believed the situation dire enough to relinquish the proper bed to Loki this time, and it was Thor instead who grabbed the scratchy quilt spread atop the comforter and left, closing the door behind him.

Nothing helped. First he laid down under the covers fully dressed; but soon it became much too hot that way and Loki ended up thrashing out of every article of clothing until he was left only in his undershirt and boxers, much too miserable to care whether it was indecent to wear so little given the circumstances. Thor was an _idiot_ because how the hell was he supposed to fall asleep when the entire bed smelled like the Carhartt, so powerful and tormenting in the comfort it inspired that he couldn’t pull the sheets up near his face; so he stretched out on his back, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes until he forced all the tears out of them.

He laid there for over an hour before he found himself standing blearily in the open doorway of the bedroom. He had taken only a moment to replace his slacks and dry his face with the front of his shirt in an effort to make himself presentable.

Thor evidently shared his insomnia; he was still dressed, sprawled over the back of the couch again, his feet propped up on the coffee table beside two empty plates. The quilt sat in a heap adjacent to him, unused.

Thor’s head swung up and he fixed Loki with a somber, ambiguous expression that made him look much too old, laugh lines standing out around his mouth and eyes now that they weren’t being used. Wordlessly, he got to his feet and went into the kitchen, where he produced from some rarely-used cabinet a fifth of vodka and two tumblers.

They sat at the counter top and drank shots until Loki passed out on the yellow linoleum. Then Thor went and draped the quilt over his shoulders.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so nice to hear from you all, I loved reading your comments! To be warned, the next chapter is a little shorter than usual, but that also means it'll be ready sooner as well, so. Silver linings and all that!
> 
> I hope you're all having lovely holidays!


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